Reports the New York Times: “It wasn’t a television blackout of John McCain; it was worse: split-screen contrasts that at times made it seem as if Barack Obama was on a state visit while back home his opponent chafed at the perks and privileges of an incumbent commander in chief.”

The NY Times pointed out this interesting contrast: “On Tuesday, Mr. McCain held a town hall-style meeting in Rochester, N.H. In the shadow of the ancient Temple of Hercules in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Obama solemnly described his vision for peace in the region while standing at a lectern, the Middle East sprawling out behind him.”

“All three cable news networks carried Mr. Obama’s news conference live and in full. They showed only parts of Mr. McCain’s forum and focused mostly on his reaction to Mr. Obama’s statements.  Even Fox News broke away from Mr. McCain midevent to cover the rescue of a bear cub wounded in a California fire and nicknamed Lil’ Smokey,” the NY Times continued.

Quick to hit back, Mr. McCain’s surrogates complained bitterly about the Obama news blitz, and on Tuesday the McCain campaign was reduced to putting out “a Web video mocking reporters’ doting coverage with a montage of anchors’ gauzy looks and glowing praise set to the tune of the Frankie Valli hit “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”

McCain aides haven’t been nearly as creative on his behalf: their stagecraft has been notably unflattering to the candidate. While Mr. Obama was shown striding across military tarmacs and inspecting troops standing at attention, Mr. McCain on Monday was portrayed by the major networks being driven around in a golf cart by former President George Bush in the resort town of Kennebunkport, Massachusetts.  Later, the two men spoke to reporters side by side at a waterfront, and they looked more like fellow members of a Past Presidents’ Club than a party elder passing the torch to his political heir.

CNN even contrasted how the two candidates pronounce Pakistan. (Mr. Obama favors the more international Pahk-ee-stahn; Mr. McCain keeps the a’s flat.)

It’s a very short trip by diplomatic standards, but it’s a long one for television, and every new stop is an exercise in contrast between the way the main stream media has taken sides and have attempted to influence the race, one way or the other. 

The above scenario rings out extremely familiarly for palm oil in the way that the main stream media has gone to town with the negative reports on palm oil everytime some environmental NGO issues a “Palm Oil Report”.  

When CSPI first launched its dubious attacks against palm oil alleging that it was unhealthy and bad for heart health, the main stream media rolled out its big guns to give this scurrilous allegation headline grabbing media space.  However, when numerous scientific studies were brought to bear on the issue which proved that palm oil was, in fact heart friendly as it was packed with anti-oxidants such as beta-carotene, toco-trienols, Co-enzyme Q10, etc and that palm oil stimulates the synthesis of protective HDL cholesterol and removal of harmful LDL cholesterol(i),  the main stream media gave this science-support rebuttal scant media column inches, or at least, did not give it the same degree of coverage as it first did when CSPI launched it’s anti-palm oil campaign.

CSPI laid low for a decade or so before changing stratagem and launching its now infamous “Cruel Oil Report”, now deviously alleging that palm oil growth has been fueled by massive deforestation leading to global warming and the potential extinction of pygmy elephants and orang utan.

Deforestation Watch takes the view that such scurrilous and unsubstantiated attacks can only damage the environmental cause when other environmental organizations blindly takes up the cudgels and when the claims are exposed for what they are – unsubstantiated and worse, outright lies!

Sure enough, environmental outfits ranging from the lightweight like the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Mongabay and Wetlands to the heavyweights like Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Greenpeace fell for the CSPI bait and began falling over each other in taking up the anti-palm oil “cause”.  RAN, in fact takes the wild allegation of orang utan extinction even further by alleging that the extinction could come as early as 2011 (ii).

However, the facts do not bear out these claims as Malaysia, despite being the world’s largest producer of palm oil and despite having developed palm oil plantations for over a hundred years, can still boast forest cover of more than 65% which is far higher than the 20% forest cover typically found in the countries of the industrialized West, from which lobbies such as CSPI and RAN have emerged to take this unconscionable stance against palm oil!  Again, if we look at the Malaysian state of Sarawak which is the most active in developing palm plantations, we can see that its agricultural to forest ratio is 8%:76%.  Compare this to the United Kingdom which has the typical Western nation agricultural to forest ratio profile of 70%:12%. The moral posturing of CSPI and RAN appears to be misplaced!

However, it is the allegation that orang utans may go extinct by 2011, a short three years from now that reveals how credible these organization are!  Whilst it’s true that the most recent estimate for the Sumatran Orangutan is around 7,300 individuals in the wild  while the Bornean Orangutan population is estimated at between 45,000 and 69,000, this surely is more egg on the faces of the environmental movement.  How can the orang utan, by any leap of logic or stretch of imagination, go extinct within 3 years?

However, CSPI’s reckless and unscientific ways are catching up with them.  Even media networks such as Fox News have caught on to their dishonorable and unsavory ways.  Says Foxnews.com: “CSPI's 30-year history of formenting bogus food scares including attacks on Chinese, Mexican and Italian foods, movie popcorn, caffeine, the fat-substitute Olestra, meat, fast foods, and snack foods to gain publicity for purposes of fundraising tens of millions of dollars.(iii)
 
The scam has been very profitable for CSPI, where "non-profit" doesn't mean that the organization doesn't make money; only that it doesn't pay any taxes.”

Considering the funds raised by the other environmental organizations such as RAN, FOE and Greenpeace and the annual budgets that these support, it would not be farfetched to wonder whether Fox News’ damning verdict on CSPI cannot be applied equally to them!  Any fair-minded editor of the main stream media reading this editorial should consider investigating the motives of these ‘environmental organizations” in pursuing these anti-palm oil campaigns, in particular the funding behind these campaigns, and the funds that they attract to the environmental NGO’s.  It should make very interesting reading!  THE END.

References
(i)  Khosla & Hayes, “Dietary fat saturation in rhesus monkeys affects LDL concentrations by modulating the independent production of LDL apolipoprotein B,” 1083 Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 46 (1991); Lindsey, et al., “Dietary palmatic acid (16:0) enhances high density lipoprotein cholesterol and low density lipoprotein receptor mRNA abundance in hamsters,” 195 Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 261 (1990); Hayes, et al., “Dietary 18:1/18:2 ratio correlates highly with hepatic FC and mRNas for apo A1, apo E, and the LDL receptor,” 78 Circulation 96 (supp. 1988).
(ii)  An allegation made by RAN in its website www.ran.org
(iii) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,53570,00.html