No, Virginia, World Wildlife Fund is no Saint

By Kathleen Marquardt 25 July 2019  @ American Policy Center  Animal Rights, Sustainable Development

 

Recently Tom DeWeese, President of American Policy Center, has been writing articles about the Green New Deal and the attack on ranchers, here, here, and here. His articles have garnered tremendous response. I am the one who responds to the emails sent to American Policy Center and, lately, I have had to respond to people questioning Tom’s attacks on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF, also known as the World Wide Fund for Nature WWFN). The mail suggests that WWF is a St. Thomas of Assisi for cattle. That would be true only if you thought beef should no longer exist in our world, other than as something to worship.

I will give you some background data on WWF and its connection with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (USRSB), the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), the United Nations, Agenda 21, and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). Now if that isn’t a witches’ brew of alphabet soup, what is?

All of these seemingly disparate entities and their connections started coming together after the 1992 Earth Summit and the 1993, President’s Council on Sustainable Development was set up by Bill Clinton at President Bush’s behest. “The President’s Council on Sustainable Development was convened (on the one-year anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit) to harness corporations to green group ideology by promoting high-minded goals that sounded wonderful but silently eliminated natural resource extraction as part of a proper society.”[1]

The PCSD laid out ‘The Principles of Sustainability’ for ‘Our Vision of a Sustainable United States of America’:

Principle 4. Human Population must be stabilized at a level consistent with the capacity of the earth to support all its inhabitants in healthy conditions over the long term. Hunger and starvation around the world have been caused, mainly, because of either government policies or wars – not by overpopulation. This ruse is to fulfill the goal of reducing the human population.

Principle 5. In order to protect natural systems and preserve their benefits for future generations, current patterns of consumption should be altered through steady improvements in the efficiency of natural resource use. This is a biggie. First, patterns of consumption: we will see later in this article that meat eating is considered unsustainable, not by science but by those with an agenda. And those ‘steady improvements in the efficiency’ is a ruse to shut down natural resource use by humans, thus is both the Wildlands Project (taking land from property owners and allowing only animals to inhabit), and to reduce the human population.

Principle 9. Where public health may be affected adversely, or environmental damage may be serious or irreversible, protective action may be necessary even in the face of scientific uncertainty. What might necessitate protective action in spite of hard knowledge either lacking or to the contrary? This murky statement rings of 1984 and Brave New World. This is a ruse to shut people out of natural resources, i.e., the Wildlands Project.

Principle 10. The traditional behavior of government, private institutions, and individuals must change fundamentally if we are to ensure economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity over the long term. This one is blatantly that we need a top-down powerful government that controls industry and people through Public Private Partnerships, and removal of property rights and freedom, with the social equity of Orwell’s four legs good, two legs bad.

Principle 15. Since sustainability in the United States is closely tied to global sustainability, U.S. policies regarding trade, economic development, and environmental protection must evolve in the context of their international implications. A mouthful but basically saying that the U.S. must obey the U.N. on trade, economic development, and environmental protection – or in other words, we will sell what the UN wants to whom the UN wishes, we will limit what we produce to what we are allowed by the U.N., and most of our environment will be off-limits to us humans.

Principle 16. Citizens must have access to formal and lifelong non-formal education that enables them to understand the interdependence of economic growth, environmental quality, and social equity, and prepares them to take actions that support all three. Note the qualifying part of the access to education; it will not be education, but programming so that we understand exactly what we must do to be the ideal global citizen zombies.

One of the PCSD taskforces was the Sustainable Agriculture Task Force (SATF).

The Sustainable Agriculture Task Force is developing an integrated vision of sustainable agriculture, focusing on sustainable production practices and systems. The Task Force will recommend goals and actions in the areas of agriculture-related research and education, technology, and farming practices and systems to the Council for the National Action Strategy.

In other words, they will tell the farmers and ranchers how they must run their operations. SAFT’s definition of sustainable is not the dictionary’s definition. Sustainable, to SAFT, the UN, and NGOs is to provide enough for themselves and their useful idiots, and free up the rest of the land to be Wildlands.

From: https://clintonwhitehouse1.archives.gov/White_House/EOP/pcsd/vision/revised-draft.html
That was written back in 1995, almost a quarter of a century ago. Since then, there has been major ‘progress’ to advance the Agenda 21 (and now, 2030) goals. Now you can see where those other alphabet/NGO groups come in. This taskforce was chaired by John H. Adams, Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council; Richard Barth, Chairman, President & CEO, Ciba-Geigy Corporation; and Richard Rominger, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture, i.e., big Green + Big Pharma with a little government added. Other members were Carol M. Browner of the EPA; John Sawhill, President and CEO of the Nature Conservancy; and Jonathan Lash, President of World Resources Institute (WRI).

A note on WRI: The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), Worldwatch Institute, EPA, Sierra Club, and others argue that the cost in human tragedy is a cost well incurred if there is even a remote chance that global warming will occur with all its forecast catastrophes.[2] The Institute generally argues through its key research leaders that national economics must be controlled by interventionists and that natural resources should not be used at all. The Institute’s highly impressive studies generally ignore the costs of environmentalism, the value of private property and individual liberty. The intellect this Institute brings to bear to stop development throughout the world is equaled only by its financing.[3] *(emphasis mine)

Back to beef ranchers and their foe. In 2010, the NCBA invited World Wildlife Federation’s Jason Clay to be the keynote speaker at their Summer Convention. That signaled the imbedding of the WWF’s global sustainability guidelines as well as production standards into the U.S. beef industry. That included adding the WWF’s panda onto the Beef Check-off logo. And the road to so-called sustainable beef was taken. You might ask where this road is going. Let the World Wildlife Federation’s 2017 report, Appetite for Destruction, reported here in “Meat eaters are destroying the planet, says report”, tell you the destination:

Meat consumption is devastating some of the world’s most valuable and vulnerable regions, due to the vast amount of land needed to produce animal feed, a report has warned.

The growing popularity of a Western diet, which contains high levels of meat and dairy, means an area 1.5 times the size of the European Union would be saved if global consumption of animal products was reduced to meet nutritional requirements.

The report went on to say that, to save the Earth, it was vital that we change human consumption habits away from meat.

Now, if this happened 20 years ago – if the beef industry put itself under the control of an organization that was working toward their imminent demise – sane people would have ask why in the world they would do that. But we have far fewer people in the world who are able to think critically, so when people go to the grocery store to buy their beef and see the WWF panda logo on the package, they think nothing of it (if they think at all) or think it is cute.

We all know that government never met a regulation that they didn’t like. Yet, the NCBA and cohorts were successful in persuading Congress to repeal Country of Origin Labeling (COOL), which was actually a good piece of legislation for both the public and the ranchers. Now, beef can be brought in from other countries and labeled as US beef; we know that no other country has such strict guidelines for both quality and animal welfare as the U.S., so we will never know what we are getting with the new so-called U.S. beef.

Next, the USRSB, the US Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, formed in 2015, “ is a multi-stakehold initiative developed to advance, support and communicate continuous improvement in sustainability of the U.S. beef value chain. The USRSB achieves this through leadership, innovation, multi-stakeholder engagement, and collaboration”.

A lot of the fuzzy-wuzzy Sustainable Development words, but what do they mean? Stakeholders are those who are involved but few have any physical stake in the cattle business other than what they will squeeze out of it by being one of those wielding control from afar. This includes Civil Society: Academic institutions, non-government and non-commercial institutions, foundations, alliances and associations with a stake in the beef value chain (it doesn’t say how these groups get a stake in the chain).

When they talk about “to advance, support and communicate continuous improvement in sustainability of the U.S. beef value chain”, they are blowing smoke. Many, if not most, of today’s ranchers have been on their land for several generations. They know more about making their land sustainable (in the true sense of the word), than any ‘sustainablist’ from the UN ever could (or would want to). If the ranchers hadn’t been using the best practices in caring for their land, they wouldn’t have any usable land at all by now. And that ‘beef value chain’, what is it? It is vertical marketing – controlling every aspect of beef production from the feed to the barns, to the care, to the slaughterhouse, to the packaging, selling, and transporting of the final product. They are intent at controlling every aspect of the beef industry; that way they have to do only minor changes to shut down the entire US beef supply when they are ready.

I hope this clears up a lot of misinformation that is spread thicker than cow manure in the MSM. But if you have questions, I am the one answering the emails at American Policy Center. I will try to answer any you have.

p.s. if none of that convinced you that the American beef industry shouldn’t be in bed with the World Wildlife Fund, how about this: “Anti-poaching guards backed by the World Wide Fund for Nature have gang-raped women and tortured villagers by tying their penises with fishing lines, according to the charity’s own investigators. WWF told its partners to treat the findings in a ‘non-public fashion.’”

[1] Arnold, Ron and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy, p 280;…
[2] Coffman, Michael S., Ph.D., Saviors of the Earth?, p.45.
[3] Arnold, Ron and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy, p 537.
* commentary from Arnold’s book on the following pages is enlightening on WRI.

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Kathleen Marquardt

KathleenMarquardt@americanpolicy.org

Kathleen Marquardt has been an advocate for property rights and freedom for decades. While not intending to be an activist, she has become a leader and an avid supporter of constitutional rights, promoter of civility, sound science, and reason. She is dedicated to exposing the fallacies of the radical environmental and animal rights movements. She has been featured in national publications including Fortune, People, the Washington Post, and Field and Stream, as well as television news programs such as Hard Copy, The McLaughlin Group, Geraldo, and many others. Today, she serves as Vice President of American Policy Center. Kathleen now writes and speaks on Agenda21/2030, and its threat to our culture and our system of representative government.

Going after our food supply

By Kathleen Marquardt 04 Jan 2019 @ American Policy Center

Posted at  Environment, Farming, Privacy Rights, Sustainable Development by Kathleen Marquardt

A couple weeks ago, Tom DeWeese sent out a letter about the World Wildlife Fund and beef. It reads in part:

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is one of the top three most powerful, radical, anti-free enterprise, UN environmental groups in the world.

And WWF has succeeded in taking over the American Cattle industry!

The WWF has forced cattlemen to follow radical Sustainable rules through the establishment of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

They are getting away with this industry grab because the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is now under the control of the World Wildlife Fund.

And the WWF’s Sustainable Roundtable now controls the beef packing industry which in turn controls the entire beef retail market. Cattlemen either toe the WWF dictates or are cut out of the industry.

That means cattlemen must follow massive regulations in order to produce American beef.

These rules ignore that fact that American cattlemen have always produced the highest grade of beef in the world – simply by using a process that has been used by their forefathers for generations.
The real result of these rules isn’t to produce a better beef product – but to destroy small producers and drive the industry to the massive corporate farms that can afford to play ball with the World Wildlife Fund.

Eventually, the WWF goal is to destroy the entire beef industry.

The World Wildlife Fund has openly stated its opposition to beef production. They insist that to “Save the Earth it is demanded that we change human consumption habits away from beef.” 

Here is what they said in a recent WWF report:

“Meat consumption is devastating some of the world’s most valuable and vulnerable regions, due to the vast amount of land needed to produce animal feed.”

This is the growing threat of Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development and its stated purpose to “reorganize human society.”

And this is how they do it – one industry at a time.

In 1992, I wrote the following article for Putting People First, an organization I founded to combat the lies and aims of the animal rights movement. Animal rights is a false front; it is an attack on humans while pretending to care about animals. The leaders have no use for animals other than to change our culture and control our food supply.

Many environmentalists and animal rightists go back and forth across the line that might separate them. For example, Paul Watson looked into the eye of a dying whale and saw that the whale “had pity for us.” Many ALF (Animal Liberation Front) ELF (Earth Liberation Front) members are the same people; terrorism on behalf of animals is as comfortable for them as on behalf of Gaia/mother earth.

“ANIMAL RIGHTS” HIDES UNDER ENVIRONMENTALISM

During the past two years, Putting People First has reported on arsons, bombings and attempted murder by “animal rights” activists. Our exposure of their terrorism has helped awaken the public to the true agenda of what we call the animal cult.

But as the morally bankrupt ideology of animalism has been exposed, its apologists have gone to ground, seeking cover under the more publicly-acceptable guise of “environmentalism.”

Most members of Putting People First consider themselves environmentalists, because we support wise use and conservation, and oppose environmental destruction (just as we support animal welfare and oppose animal abuse).

However, we also oppose attempts to remove people from the natural equation. We believe that only man can use science, reason and common sense to husband animals and other resources to the benefit of people, animals, and our common environment.

And the difference between conservation and “environmentalism” is no less than the difference between animal welfare and “animal rights.”

Jeremy Rifkin’s new vegetarian manifesto Beyond Beef hides its message behind a pseudoenvironmentalist facade. The supposedly “mainstream” Chesapeake Bay Foundation shared the podium with PeTA at “Vegetarian Expo ’92.” The radical Humane Society of the United States now calls its school-infiltration arm the National Association for Humane and Environmental Education. And the terrorist manual A Declaration of War by “Screaming Wolf’ is subtitled “Killing People to Save Animals and the Environment.”

I think the clearest example of the unity of environmentalism and animalism is the close relationship between the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the “ecotage” group Earth First! These groups have been working together at least since 1987, when arsons at a California meat processing plant and livestock facility were claimed as joint ALF/Earth First! actions.

Since then. Earth First! Journal has published several laudatory articles about ALF, including one featuring Rod Coronado, the FBI’s leading suspect in several recent arsons. The March 1992 issue carried a terrorist “how-to” article with the ALF byline. The Journal is best known for trying to recruit “terminally ill AIDS patients” for “eco-kamikazee missions.”

Earth First! founder David Foreman is the former chief lobbyist for the Wilderness Society. He says, “Mankind could go extinct and I for one would not shed any tears.” Regarding the Ethiopian famine, Foreman gave this advice: “The worst thing we could do in Ethiopia is give aid. . .. The best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let people there starve.”

“As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but as a necessary solution,” says Foreman. “AIDS is a good thing, because it will thin out the population,” he adds. “If the AIDS epidemic didn’t exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one.” And indeed, Earth First! Journal has solicited donations toward the development of what it calls “a species-specific virus to wipe out the human race.”

Foreman’s magazine Wild Earth recently opined that “phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth, social and environmental.” Foreman is not alone in this opinion. “Somewhere along the line—at about a million years ago, maybe half that—we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth,” writes David Graber, a biologist with the National Park Service. “Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

Earth First! is best known for tree-spiking, although four of its leaders were recently convicted of conspiracy to sabotage a nuclear power plant in Arizona. Two Earth First! members, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, were seriously injured when a bomb they were transporting exploded prematurely in Bari’s car in Oakland, California. B­ari and Cherney’s legal fees were paid by Greenpeace, on whose board sits Earth First! co-founder Michael Roselle.

Sierra Club lobbyist David Brower openly defends Earth First!, saying, “They’re not terrorists. The real terrorists are the polluters, the despoilers.” Brower argues that childbearing should be “a punishable crime against society unless the parents hold a government license.” All potential parents, he says, should be “required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

According to Brower, “I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded the Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We’re still waiting for someone to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.”

Just as “animal rights” terrorists and their apologists infiltrated and took over many traditional animal welfare groups and local humane societies, so have anti-human “Greens” infiltrated and taken over many traditional conservation groups.

It is time to flush these varmints out. We have had great success educating the public about the difference between animal welfare and “animal rights.” Now it is time to educate them about the difference between conservation and “environmentalism.”

In 1992, the National Cattlemen’s Association (NCA) was run by true pioneers and American patriots. Like many organizations that represent meat, milk, circuses, rodeos, zoos, medical research, wool, leather, fur, silk, and pet ownership, the NCA has been co-opted one way or the other to turn it’s back on those who they represent; those who built and feed America.

As you can see, both animal rights and the so-called environmental movement are not friends of humans, animals, or the earth. But they are double-teaming us to take away our rights and freedoms.

Kathleen Marquardt

KathleenMarquardt@americanpolicy.org

Kathleen Marquardt has been in the freedom movement since before it was called that. She was founder and chairman of Putting People First, a non-profit organization combatting the animal rights movement. Her book, AnimalScam: the Beastly Abuse of Human Rights, was published by Regnery in 1993. Kathleen has been Vice President of American Policy Center since 2000 and is the Agenda 21/Sustainable Development expert for Rocky Top Freedom Campaign. She was a contributing writer and researcher for Freedom Advocates.

The sky is falling?!?

Ridiculous report claims humans have killed more than half the world’s wildlife in past 48 years

Greg Walcher

A recent World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report claims humans have killed more than half of all the wildlife in the world since 1970. Alex HortonEmail Bio Follow The report attracted media mass attention, even though the actual 145-page essay doesn’t really say that, much less prove it.

More ironic, the political focus is mostly on countries where the declining wildlife populations do not live, and the solution suggested is so vague it couldn’t possibly address the issue.

The hype about the document, an annual harangue called the “Living Planet Report,” is not surprising, considering the source. This is the same organization that told us a decade ago we would all have to abandon Planet Earth.

“Earth's population will be forced to colonize two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a… study by the WWF. [The study] warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life. The report… reveals that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades.”

That was a remarkable conclusion, especially considering that 71% of the Earth’s surface is water. That means humans would have to have destroyed virtually every square inch of land on Earth for the report to be credible. So it’s incredible that the WWF and its annual report continue to attract media attention.

This year’s diatribe claims almost 60% of all the fish, birds and animals on Earth have been killed by people in two generations. It proposes “a new global deal for nature,” a companion for the Paris Climate treaty. Except unlike Paris, the proposed “new deal for nature” has no numbers and no specific goals. In fact, there is no definition of what the agreement might entail.

Rather, it includes vague suggestions that we’re not locking up enough land from public access, nor creating enough national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas and other “unpeopled” places. For the United States, that means the WWF is not satisfied that laws, regulations and other actions have already prohibited mining, drilling, timber harvesting and other human activities on 427 million acres of federal land. That’s the size of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined, and it does not include state and private lands that have also been closed to most human activity.

The report’s language is decidedly European and American, using policy terms common to the western environmental industry. For example, it discusses the “progress” in removing dams in the USA – levying special criticism on agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley – and approvingly cites efforts to designate more wild and scenic rivers.

It continues the ongoing criticism of western mining, timber production and “unsustainable agriculture,” accusations with which we’re all too familiar. In truth, these people simply want to stop most human uses of land, water and other resources of the American West.

There is another major problem with using this report to further that goal. The wildlife it laments do not live in the American West. Many are found in countries where energy-deprived, jobless, hungry, desperate people cut down forest habitats for fuel, eat wildlife to survive, and kill other species to sell their ivory, horns or meat for a few dollars.

Also, keep in mind that the reported declines in wildlife populations are based on computer modeling, not actual counting of actual animals. Still, even if you give such a report the benefit of the doubt, as many will, the dangers cited are from “warming oceans choked with plastic,” allegedly toppled rain forests, and supposedly dying coral reefs. Thus, populations are said to be tanking worst in the oceans and tropics, including an 89% decrease in South and Central America.

But make no mistake – the U.S. is nonetheless at fault. The report claims “crop failures brought on by climate change” are the reason caravans of Central Americans stream to the United States illegally. That’s why we must “urgently transition to a net carbon-neutral society and halt and reverse nature loss – through green finance and shifting to clean energy and environmentally friendly food production.”

How those terms are defined or implemented in a truly ecological, sustainable manner (more vague, malleable, politicized terms), the report does not say.

In a way, the details in this report may actually disprove its own conclusions. The U.S. and Canada are among the countries that use the most natural resources. Yet the worst wildlife declines are in the tropics, not in North America. The prime examples cited are African elephants, whale sharks, orangutans in Borneo, wandering albatross near Antarctica, jaguars in South America, gharial crocodiles in India and Nepal, and giant salamanders in China.

To note just one example where the WWF gets its “green finance” and “clean energy” facts completely upside down, a major reason orangutans are disappearing is that their habitats are being cleared to make room for palm oil biofuel plantations. How that is ecological or sustainable the WWF does not say.

The World Wildlife Fund is not the only Chicken Little constantly warning of a dire future. A similar article, published in the National Academy of Sciences journal last spring, was even more shocking. It claimed that since the dawn of civilization, humans have caused the loss of 83% of all mammals and half of all plants on Earth.

That’s because, WWF says, “the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life.” However, the WWF and many other environmental industry groups, also oppose modern mechanized farming practices and seeds that significantly increase yields, allowing farmers to feed more people from less land. Still more ironies and non sequiturs.

So while you stop driving cars and heating your homes, you might also need to stop eating – while you pack for the trip to some other planet.

If we are not Chicken Little, is the sky still falling?

 

Greg Walcher is president of the Natural Resources Group and author of “Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take it Back,” now in its second printing. He is a former head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.

 

Still More Politicized Pseudo-Science?

Paul Driessen

Widening efforts to blame neonicotinoid pesticides for honeybee “colony collapse disorder” and other “beepocalypse” problems have taken a fascinating turn.

Insisting that scientific evidence shows a clear link between neonics and honeybee population declines, EU anti-insecticide campaigners persuaded the European Union to impose a two-year ban on using the chemicals. Farm organizations and the Union’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Department unsuccessfully opposed the ban, arguing that evidence for a link is not persuasive, and actual field studies in Canada and elsewhere have found little risk to bees from the pesticides.

Then this year’s canola (rapeseed) crop suffered serious losses of 30-50 percent, due to rampaging flea beetles. Over 44,000 acres (18,000 hectares) were declared a total loss. Euro farmers blamed the ban.

Now it appears that the campaign against these newer, safer pesticides – and the scientific papers that supposedly justify the ban – were all part of a rigged, carefully orchestrated environmentalist strategy.

A recently leaked memorandum, dated June 14, 2010, summarizes a discussion earlier that month among four European scientists who wanted to block neonic use. The memo says the four agreed to find prominent authors who could write scientific papers and coordinate their publication in respected journals, so as to “obtain the necessary policy change to have these pesticides banned.”

“If we are successful in getting these two papers published,” the memo continues, “there will be enormous impact, and a campaign led by WWF etc could be launched right away. It will be much harder for politicians to ignore a research paper and a policy forum paper” in a major scientific journal. Initial papers would demonstrate that neonics adversely affect bees, other insects, birds and other species; they would be written by a carefully selected primary author and a team of scientists from around the world. Additional papers would be posted online to support these documents – and a separate paper would simultaneously call for a ban on the sale and use of neonicotinoids.

(The WWF is the activist group World Wildlife Fund or World Wide Fund for Nature.)

One meeting attendee was Piet Wit, chairman of the ecosystems management commission of the environmentalist organization International Union for Conservation of Nature. Another was Maarten Bijleveld van Lexmond, who became chairman of the IUCN’s Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, which was inaugurated in March 2011, just after the European Union agreed to finance the Task Force to the tune of €431,337 ($540,000). Vouching for the Task Force as an “independent and unbiased” scientific “advisory” group was the same Dr. Maarten Bijleveld, who is also a founding member of the WWF’s Netherlands branch and an executive officer of the IUCN’s environmental committee.

Further underscoring the “independent” nature of these organizations, the EU awarded the IUCN €24,014,125 ($30,000,000) between 2007 and 2013. Moreover, IUCN task force membership is by invitation only – making it easier to implement the Systemic Pesticides Task Force’s stated purpose: to “bring together the scientific evidence needed to underpin action on neonicotinoid pesticides.”

The entire operation is odorously reminiscent of ClimateGate orchestration of alarmist research and banning of studies questioning “dangerous manmade climate change” assertions, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1972 DDT ban, regarding which then-EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus later admitted that he had not attended a single minute of his own task force’s lengthy hearings or read a single page of its findings, which concluded that the insecticide was not dangerous to humans or most wildlife.

The IUCN/WWF campaign also recalls the equally well coordinated effort by Fenton Communications, CBS “60 Minutes” and the Natural Resources Defense Council to ban Alar (a chemical used to keep apples ripening longer on trees), in a way that would channel millions of dollars to the NRDC. It reminds me of former Environmental Defense Fund senior scientist Charles Wurster’s assertion that, “If the environmentalists win on DDT, they will achieve a level of authority they never had before.”

Never mind that the Alar scam sent many family apple orchards into bankruptcy – or that millions of African and Asian parents and children have died from malaria because radical greens have made DDT largely unavailable even for disease control. For them, humanitarian concerns rarely enter the discussion.

As science writer Hank Campbell observes, all these campaigns reflect proven strategies “to manipulate science to achieve a political goal.” They follow the Saul Alinsky/Big Green script summarized by Madeleine Cosman: Select and vilify a target. Devise a “scientific study” that predicts a public health disaster. Release it to the media, before legitimate scientists can analyze and criticize it. Generate emotional headlines and public reactions. Develop a government “solution,” and intimidate legislatures or government regulators to impose it. Coerce manufacturers to stop making and selling the product.

Environmental pressure groups have repeatedly and successfully employed these steps.

In a recent speech, Harvard School of Public Health Professor Chensheng Lu claimed that his “Harvard Study” clearly demonstrated that neonics “are highly likely to be responsible for triggering Colony Collapse Disorder.” However, pesticide expert and professional pest exterminator Rich Kozlovich says the vast majority of scientists who study bees for a living vigorously disagree. They cite multiple problems, including the fact that small bee populations were fed “astronomical” levels of insecticide-laced corn syrup, and the colonies examined for Lu’s paper did not even exhibit CCD symptoms.

President Obama has nevertheless relied heavily on all this pseudo-science, to support his June 2014 memorandum instructing relevant U.S. agencies “to develop a plan for protecting pollinators such as honey bees …in response to mounting concerns about [their] dwindling populations on American crops.” The “serious” problem, Mr. Obama insists, “requires immediate attention.”

He is playing his role in the Big Green script but, as my previous articles have noted (here, here and here), nothing in honest, actual science supports his call for yet another Executive Branch end-run around the Legislative Branch and a proper vetting of what we do know about neonics and honeybee problems.

Neonics are vital for numerous crops: canola, soybeans, wheat, winter squash, citrus groves and others.

Derived from a synthetic form of nicotine and often applied to seeds, “neonicotinoids” are incorporated into plants to defend them against pests. This allows growers to be much more targeted in killing crop-threatening insects: only those that actually feed on the plants are affected. This approach (or spraying) also means growers can successfully grow crops with far fewer large-scale insecticide applications, and dramatically reduce reliance on more toxic pesticides that do harm wildlife, including bees. Real-world field studies have shown that bees collecting pollen from plants treated with neonics are not harmed.

Other research has identified serious problems that truly are afflicting bees in Canada, the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Varroa mites carry at least 19 bee viruses and diseases – and parasitic phorid flies, Nosema intestinal fungi and the tobacco ringspot virus also cause significant colony losses. Beekeepers have accidentally killed entire hives, while trying to address such problems.

Colony Collapse Disorder has shown up from time to time for centuries. A hundred years ago it was called the “disappearing disease.” It now seems to be ebbing, and bee and beehive numbers are climbing.

We need to let real science do its job, and stop jumping to conclusions or short-circuiting the process with politicized papers, anti-neonic campaigns and presidential memorandums. We need answers, not scapegoats. Otherwise, bee mortality problems are likely to spread, go untreated and get even worse, while neonic bans cause widespread crop failures and huge financial losses for farmers.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the save-the-earth money machine.

Observations From the Back Row

De Omnibus Dubitandum!

House's '80 communists' in caucus founded by socialist group
Aaron Klein
Republican Rep. Allen West 'stands by his words' - Rep. Allen West’s remark that up to 80 members of the House are communists was a reference to the membership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which was founded by a U.S. socialist group, the Democratic Socialists of America. Some Caucus members still demonstrate a close working relationship with the socialist group West’s spokesman, Tim Edson, clarified in a statement today that West was referring to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in his talk with voters last night in Palm City, Fla. Edson declared that the Florida Republican “stands by his words.”

Court: TSA, not passengers, deserves privacy
by Bob Unruh
Rejects cases filed by Americans enraged over digital strip-searches - A federal appeals court has rejected claims by passengers and pilots that the TSA invaded their privacy and violated their rights by demanding pat-down inspections or full-body scans. The decision affirms a district court ruling from Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., who cited a “secret” order from the TSA as the reason he rejected the cases.
The government, insisting that the “secret” order contains “sensitive security information,” has refused to make public the document outlining the procedures… Institute attorneys had argued that since the TSA “order” has remained “secret,” there has been no opportunity for the public to comment on it, and “passengers and pilots are not only being deprived of their Fourth Amendment rights, but also their due process right to a fair hearing on their challenge to the secret TSA policy.”

“This ruling does not bode well for attempts to ensure transparency in government or efforts to safeguard Americans against virtual strip searches and other excessive groping of our bodies by government agents, especially when there’s no suspicion of wrongdoing,” ...“When civil liberties are tossed out the window – by government agents or by the courts – we all lose. No American should be forced to undergo a virtual strip search or be subjected to such excessive groping of the body as a matter of course in reporting to work or boarding an airplane when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing,” he said.

Few hybrid vehicle owners are repeat buyers
Hybrid sales have been surging as fuel prices take their latest run towards record levels. But the news might not be nearly as good as it would seem if a new study by R.L. Polk is any indication. Despite previous sales surges tied to past petroleum price hikes the U.S. hybrid vehicle market hasn’t been able to maintain its momentum and the Polk study apparently explains why. After living with the high-mileage technology, nearly two of three hybrid owners wind up returning to a more conventional vehicle when it’s time to trade in. “Having a hybrid in the product lineup can certainly give a brand a competitive edge when it comes to attracting new customers,” noted Brad Smith, director of Polk’s Loyalty Management Practice. “The repurchase rates of hybrid vehicles are an indication that consumers are continuing to seek alternative solutions to high fuel prices.”

12 Christians in Iran await verdicts after Easter Sunday apostasy trial
Twelve Christians stood trial Easter Sunday in Iran, where they were called “apostates” in a courtroom and tried on multiple charges, according to sources close to Iran’s Christian community. The Christians had been acquitted on the same charges, including “crimes against the order,” a year ago in Bandar Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea. The group was first arrested when authorities found them drinking wine while taking communion, according to sources. “It ultimately illustrates that being a Christian is illegal in Iran. No matter how clear or how open a pastor and a church may be, Christians are being brought to trial just for being Christian,” said Jason DeMars, director of the Present Truth Ministries

Deadly Virus Increases Mosquito Blood Lust
Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer
Mosquitoes are already blood-sucking machines, but new research indicates that the dengue virus, which the mosquitoes transmit to humans, makes them even thirstier for blood. The virus specifically turns on mosquito genes that make them hungrier for a blood meal; the activated genes also enhance mosquitoes' sense of smell, something that likely improves their feeding skills. The result is a mosquito better able to serve the virus by carrying it more efficiently to human hosts.

Malaria Mosquitoes Accurately Find Their Way to Smelly Feet
Malaria mosquitoes utilize CO2 from exhaled air to localize humans from afar. In the vicinity of their preferred host, they alter their course towards the human feet. Researcher Remco Suer discovered how female malaria mosquitoes use foot odors in the last meters to guide them to their favoured biting place. Suer, who is defending his doctoral thesis May 9 at Wageningen University, part of Wageningen UR, sees possibilities to disrupt the host seeking behaviour of the malaria mosquito.

The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting
Charles Q. Choi
Parasites are sly, using the cleverest of ploys to stay alive while destroying almost everything in their tracks. Parasites have no mercy. Some devour the insides of their hosts. Another replaces the victim’s tongue with its own body. Here are some of the goriest highlights of the moochers.

Malaria Drug Failing–Bring out the DDT
Wesley J. Smith
DDT is a very effective pesticide, that helped the USA eradicate malaria as a health problem in the American South. But Rachael Carson blamed it for many environmental woes, and it became discredited. Many, myself included, believe that millions of poor children and others in Africa and elsewhere have died because DDT was not more aggressively wielded in malaria areas to kill mosquitoes.

Green Environmentalist Wants Eco-Gulags For Climate Change Deniers
Finnish Environmentalist - "the state should enact draconian measures of discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression in order to make people comply with environmental dictates." Before the apologists start and say that this eco-fascist is a lone voice in the wilderness, not representative of the Green environmental movement and all the usual platitudes used to explain away these people; Google “Climate Skeptics should be punished” and consider the 7.4 million hits Google returns. The demands of the Church of Climatology and its supporters for the punishment of sacrilege does not just come from Finland, the calls are global, from people such as the British Royal Family’s Green simpleton Prince Charles, Obama Science Czar John Holdren and NASA junk scientist James Hansen, who took time off from making up climate data, to demand jail for Climate Change Deniers.

Congress flooded with calls to probe Obama
Thousands demanding answers about president's eligibility - Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he’s talked to members of Arizona’s congressional delegation about his Cold Case Posse investigation, which has found probable cause that there was fraud in the creation of the birth documentation for Barack Obama released by the White House in 2011. The investigators also believe that Obama’s Selective Service registration is a forgery, leading to the obvious question of what happens if Obama is ineligible for the presidency. But Arpaio’s effort to persuade federal lawmakers apparently has fallen on deaf ears….The signers then demand that Congress launch an investigation because “not to finally resolve this monumental and unprecedented constitutional issue would be intolerable, and would constitute the most extreme disrespect and contempt for the U.S. Constitution.”

Obama's advancing communism
Exclusive: Erik Rush urges Americans to beat the drum about BHO's 'Marxist agenda' - For 100 years, communists believed that America was the only thing standing in the way of communism truly “succeeding” internationally. That’s a convenient if transparent bit of propaganda, but one which has resulted in leftists remaining dedicated to the objective of bringing America down for decades. American communists, being the pathological narcissists they are, have convinced themselves that they’ll do it the “right way” this time. Having dismantled America, what then could they not accomplish?

Holder: Voter fraud 'does not really exist'
Comment comes as video reveals attorney general's own ballot in jeopardy
A video has been posted online that reveals Attorney General Eric Holder says voter fraud “does not really exist,” even as another video shows that a man was offered Holder’s own ballot in a Washington election.
The evidence of voter fraud issues was created by Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, who released videos from three states that show his undercover colleagues easily gaining access to ballots for dead and living people and even registering to vote as Tim Tebow and Tom Brady

Why Dems hate voter ID
Exclusive: Joseph Farah says Obama, Holder have no problem with racial discrimination - It’s time to be very honest about why one political party – and one political party only – is dead-set against requiring voters to properly identify themselves at the polling place before casting their ballots. That party is the Democratic Party. And the reason it opposes voter ID is because it makes voter fraud easier when identification is not required. This should be self-evident to just about everyone – and actually is. Because every public opinion poll on the subject shows 70 to 80 percent of Americans in favor of voter ID laws. Republican voters favor it. Democratic voters favor it. Whites favor it. Blacks favor it. Hispanics favor it. Men favor it. Women favor it. Yet, the Democratic Party establishment and big majorities of Democratic members of Congress hate it…. So what the Democratic Party machine prefers is chaos at the polls, allowing virtually anyone to vote – citizen, non-citizen, legal resident, illegal resident, registered voters, non-registered voters, real voters, impostors.

Donna Laframboise: The WWF’s Vast Pool of Oil Money
The World Wildlife Fund’s first corporate sponsor was Shell oil – which continued to fund it for the next four decades. “Remember the headline in The Independent that pointed an accusing finger: Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers? And the Center for Media and Democracy’s claim thatOil Money Funds Climate Deniers and Attacks on Climate Scientists. And CleanTechnica’s automatic assumption that any politician who accept donations from oil companies is therefore a “shill for oil & gas interests”.



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