If there was an award for "most badly behaved protest group," Rainforest Action Network (RAN) would be contender for the title. Now, the Berkeley-based group of activists is trying to pull U.S. business (as well as an Italian fashion house and an Indonesian paper manufacturer) down with them. Americans will need to brace themselves, because they're about to get a taste of greenmail.

Greenmail is a dubious but common practice in which large environmental groups threaten aggressive campaigns to publicly besmirch businesses in order to coerce them to alter successful business practices that don't fit with activists' agenda. This unscrupulous tactic is often at the front of RAN's playbook. Before coming stateside, the group campaigned in Europe - subjecting the fashion house Gucci to attacks over shopping bags purchased from a company that sourced its paper from Indonesia.

Sarawak's natives have won two important court cases over native land issues, their attorney announced this morning in the Sarawak state capital of Kuching on the island of Borneo.

The cases had been filed by the natives against the state government of Sarawak and an oil palm company that planned to establish an oil palm plantation on native lands.

 Which is the issue that is considered the world’s biggest problem.  Is it climate change, terrorism or war?  According to a major worldwide BBC poll out Sunday, it is poverty that is the biggest and most intractable problem facing the world today!

 

 Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE), Wetlands International and World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) could play invaluable roles in highlighting environmental problems and promote public and corporate oversight.

But when these non-governmental organisations become biased and apply double standards, many begin to doubt their credibility.