Finally, the cat is out of the bag! Eager to give after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Americans poured $1.5 billion into hundreds of charities established to serve the victims, their families and their memories.

But a decade later, an Associated Press investigation shows the questionable motives and shady dealings of those non-profits.There are those that spent huge sums on themselves, those that cannot account for the money they received, those that have few results to show for their spending and those that have yet to file required income-tax returns. Yet many of the charities continue to raise money in the name of Sept. 11.

The AP investigation identified 325 charities created after 9/11 to serve victims, their relatives and their memories. Those nonprofits collected $1.5 billion for their causes, which included programs to help those affected by the attacks, memorials to honor the victims, and services and cash provided to relatives of victims.

The modus operandi that AP discovered with these shady charities was that dozen paid salaries and benefits to their founders without delivering on promises of charity; raised and spent money without publicly documenting their finances; or spent most of the money raised on programs or events, like a motorcycle ride, with only a small amount going to charitable purposes.

One charity, Stage 1 Productions, in Peoria, raised more than $700,000 for a giant memorial quilt, but there is still no quilt some 10 years after Sept.11. Another raised more than $4 million to help victims, but didn't account publicly for how it spent all the money. A third helps support a 9/11 flag sold by the founder's for-profit company.

There are other charities that can account for practically every penny raised - except that all the money went to pay for fundraising and not the intended mission. Questions are asked as to the real beneficiaries of all the fund raising.

Internal Revenue Service records show that less than 1 percent of the more than 1.2 million charities operating in the U.S. receive examinations or audits each year. Operating largely on an honor system, the tax-exempt organizations have little reason to fear regulator scrutiny for tax-exempt for these organizations meant only that they are exempted from paying taxes!

To be sure, most of the 325 charities identified by the AP followed the rules, accounting fully for their expenditures and closed after fulfilling identified goals.

But in virtually every category of 9/11 non-profit, an AP analysis of tax documents and other official records uncovered schemes beset with shady dealings, questionable expenses and dubious intentions.

Alarm bells must be ringing too for all the fund raising schemes introduced by certain “civil society” and “environmental” groups like the WWF and even zoos like the Melbourne Zoo and their equally questionable palm oil campaigns. These schemes read like a veritable playbook and modus operandi of these groups in targeting probably the most inherently sustainable of oilseeds for the donations and blood lucre that their palm oil campaigns attract.
 

What is particularly baffling and galling for the palm oil industry is that these groups target palm oil on the basis of 3 wholly wild and unsubstantiated grounds; that palm oil is unhealthy, that palm oil is responsible for massive deforestation and consequently the commodity threatens the extinction of biodiversity such as the orangutan. However, it appears that the stratagem has had an effect especially on multinational corporations like Nestle, Unilever and Cadbury who easily succumb to the greenmail of these groups.

So well crafted was the message and concerted nature of the accusations against palm oil made by these  seemingly disparate but obviously well planned and coordinated coalition of green groups, that the international media which is usually so fond of investigative reporting against the likes of Ghadafi, Sadam Hussein and other third world dictators chose not to investigate their claims against this innocent third world crop, but electing instead to publish verbatim the lie-a-minute press releases of these groups.

The clue to the real intentions of these groups is the strange appearance of massive PR and ad campaigns launched by these groups to coincide with their palm oil campaigns. The proof that they have more than social activism on their minds are the crass ads launched over Australian TV by the WWF soliciting funds and donations to “save the orangutan” from the devastation supposedly wrought by palm oil. From the frequency and intensity of the TV ad campaign, palm oil bashing must be a really lucrative business for the WWF!

The WWF also ran ads in the Economist Magazine where they naturally appealed for donations to help fund their activities. In the ad, WWF inserted a bottle of “100% Unsustainable Palm Oil” in which the ingredients contained “the homes of the endangered orangutans, millions of hectares of natural forests, hundreds of forest fires, greenhouse gas emissions and countless land disputes involving indigenous people’s property,” an unmasking of their real intentions and adding to the cacophony of extremist viewpoints that seek to embellish the facts in order to line their pockets.

An examination of the facts, if the international media would take the trouble to do so, would show very quickly that the allegations do not have any merit.

On the claim by these scammers that palm oil is largely saturated fat and therefore unhealthy, much scientific studies have shown that palm oil is, in fact heart friendly as the saturated fatty acids in the sn-1 and -3 position (typically found in palm oil) has very different biological consequences than animal fats such as lard and milk fats as the saturated fats are primarily found in the sn-2 position! (Vide: Donald J. McNamara, PhD: “Palm Oil and Heart Health: A case of Manipulated Perception and Misuse of Science” 240S Vol 29 No. 3(s) Journal of the American College of Nutrition)

Palm oil is also the richest source of the heart friendly anti-oxidant tocotrienol, a superior form of Vitamin E as well as other heart friendly phyto-nutrients such as Co Enzyme Q10, betacarotenes and other polyphenols.

As for the oft repeated allegation of massive deforestation which is threatening the existence of the orangutan, it should be pointed out that natural palm oil, by and of itself is already the most sustainable edible oil around. Consider this fact. Palm oil is grown on only 0.23% of the world's agricultural land and yet produces a staggering 30% of the world's supply of edible oil.

This fact alone should clue in objective observers as to the real reasons behind the baffling anti-palm oil campaigns against this hyper productive commodity!

A quick look at the Melbourne Zoo’s “Don’t Palm Us Off” palm oil denigration campaign shows that it has been no less lucrative. It would surely delight the zoo especially its Director  of Conservation, Rachel Lowry, when Orange Power announced recently a donation of 150,000 Australian Dollars to the zoo to “help Zoos Victoria fund conservation campaigns such as ‘Don’t Palm us Off’, which is calling for mandatory labeling of palm oil used as an ingredient in manufactured consumer products.”

So the donation was not to help maintain the orangutans but to “help Zoos Victoria fund conservation campaigns such as ‘Don’t Palm us Off’, which is calling for mandatory labeling of palm oil used as an ingredient in manufactured consumer products.”

Truth be told, if the real intention of the Melbourne Zoo is to help conservation programs there are only 2 actions that the zoo should take which is truly credible.

One is to release all captive animals kept in the zoo, especially the poor orangutans back into the wild! The other is to reject the donation or divert it to Malaysia to set up a real honest to goodness orangutan conservation program. After all, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) is providing a dollar for dollar matching grant for genuine wildlife conservation programs, especially orangutan conservation programs!

It is certainly instructive to note that neither the WWF nor the Melbourne Zoo has ever applied for the matching grant for an orangutan conservation project in Malaysia from the MPOC. Orangutan welfare and conservation appear to be the least of their concerns and all their focus appear to be the solicitation of funds and donations!

The suspicion that Deforestation Watch has is that orangutan conservation is the last thing on the mind of the WWF and the Melbourne Zoo.

In fact, in the view of Deforestation Watch, for the Melbourne Zoo’s Director of Conservation, the $150,000 donation from Orange Power is exactly the kind of “kaching” moment which inevitably evokes the sound of the cash register ringing, that the “Don’t Palm Us Off” campaign was designed to elicit. The irreconcilable irony of animals such as the free ranging orangutans being kept in captivity in a zoo and their professed love for conservation is obviously lost on the zoo’s Director of Conservation. She could care less about orangutans or any wild animals that the Melbourne Zoo could so crassly lock away for the paying public to gawk at!

For the 9/11 scammers, officials in Arizona and New York have launched investigations into the dishonest charities following the investigation by The Associated Press last week that uncovered dozens of 9/11 charities across the country that didn't disclose publicly how they raised and spent money, didn't keep promises to create memorials or contribute to 9/11 causes, or did more to help their creators than those affected by the terrorist attacks.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office said state lawyers are conducting their own "broad review" of 9/11 charities to make certain that all documentation for charities related to the 2001 terrorist attacks is in order and that all rules on fundraising and public disclosure are being followed.

In Arizona, state Attorney General Tom Horne said his office is investigating a 9/11 charity that raised more than $700,000 from students, police and others to create a massive memorial quilt that was never completed.

Schneiderman spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua said the AG "takes issues involving charities and nonprofit abuse very seriously, and encourages anyone with information about such matters to immediately contact our office."

Horne, the Arizona attorney general, said investigators launched the inquiry into Stage 1 Productions after reading the AP's report that the charity's founder paid himself and his relatives more than a third of the money raised for the project, including $141,000 in compensation, more than $45,000 to repay an undocumented loan, and $200 a week in car allowance.

"Once we start an investigation, I can't talk about that particular investigation until it's concluded," Horne said. "But as a general matter with respect to charities, if somebody represents that he's raising money for the charity, he needs to represent it for the charity. If he's raising it for himself, rather than the charity, that's really theft."

Jim Riches, a New York City firefighter whose son died on 9/11 trying to rescue victims inside the World Trade Center, said, "It's disgusting. They're taking advantage of 9/11," Riches said. "I think it's blood money."

The strange parallels between the 9/11 charities and the shady dealings behind the palm oil deforestation scam is so eerily similar that Deforestation Watch calls for the Associated Press and other conscientious media organizations to launch an investigation into the WWF and the Melbourne Zoo’s palm oil campaigns and reveal how the massive sums that they raise from these campaigns are utilized. We have a sneaky suspicion that some interesting revelations would in all likelihood, be forthcoming! THE END