COLOMBIA VIDEO: Biofuel Terrorism
“Land and Territory—The Key to Peace in Colombia”
CPTnet – 14 February 2011
Christian Peacemaker Teams Colombia invites you to watch the video, “Land and Territory: The Key to Peace in Colombia,” produced by The Grassroots Communities and Peace Initiatives Network, which covers the story of three communities and their struggle for land in Colombia. As the title indicates, land, along with legal title, must be returned to these communities and all displaced communities in order for peace and justice to emerge in Colombia. One cannot talk about the Colombian conflict without discussing the takeover of land by multinational companies, both through legal means and through armed paramilitary violence. CPT Colombia is accompanying the communities of El Garzal and Las Pavas, featured in the video, as they struggle to remain on their land and protect their communities.
The “greening” of a shady business – Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil
World Rainforest Movement | Grain | October 2010
Oil palm plantations have spread rapidly around the globe in recent decades, with profound implications for local communities and the environment. A“Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil” (RSPO) was formed to promote sustainable production practices. But is this possible? Or does the RSPO merely amount to the greenwashing of an inherently destructive industry? The World Rainforest Movement produced an analysis.1
Over the past few decades, oil palm plantations have rapidly spread throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, where millions of hectares have already been planted and millions more are planned for the next few years. These plantations are causing increasingly serious problems for local peoples and their environment, including social conflict and human rights violations. In spite of this, a number of interests – national and international – continue actively to promote this crop, against a background of growing opposition at the local level. It is within this context that a voluntary certification scheme has emerged – the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – with the aim of assuring consumers that the palm oil they consume – in foodstuffs, soap, cosmetics or fuel – has been produced in a sustainable manner.2
To pretend that a product obtained from large-scale monocultures of mostly alien palm trees can be certified as “sustainable”3 is – to say the least – a misleading statement, especially for oil palm plantations, with their history of tropical deforestation and widespread human rights abuses.4 This, however, is precisely what the RSPO is doing.
The first shipment of palm oil certified as “sustainable” arrived in the Netherlands in November 2008, under enormous controversy. Greenpeace pointed out that “United Plantations, the company producing the sustainable palm oil, is cutting down trees from vulnerable peat forests in Kalimantan, Indonesia.” It added that this company “does not comply with local Indonesian laws that protect the environment” and that it is “entangled in land conflicts with the local population.” It was not a good start for RSPO’s credibility.5
| Corporations’ firm grasp
The power balance between corporations and NGOs is clearly shown in the RSPO’s current Executive Board (February 2010), where the majority of its members represent corporations or associations of corporations: President: Jan Kees Vis – Unilever Only two environmental/nature conservation NGOs (WWF and Conservation International) and two social/development NGOs (Oxfam and Sawit Watch) are represented on the board. The other 12 members represent oil palm growers (4), palm oil processors and/or traders (2), consumer goods manufacturers (2), retailers (2), banks/investors (2). Additionally, its ordinary and affiliate members include some very well-known corporations typically associated with social and environmental damage – Cargill, Cognis, International Finance Corporation, British Petroleum, Bunge, Syngenta and Bayer, among others. |
The RSPO has been a long, time-consuming and expensive process, involving industry, commerce and some social and conservation NGOs.6 The question is: why did the private sector get involved in it? The answer is given very clearly in an “Overview of RSPO” included in a press release on 24 November 2008:
As a result of all the above-mentioned issues [tropical deforestation, social conflicts over land rights, food versus fuel] some environmental and social NGOs are actively campaigning against palm oil. There is a risk that the adverse publicity might lead the European Union to stop buying palm oil for biodiesel blending or remove tax support for palm biodiesel until palm oil meets the minimum sustainability criteria. Consumer outcry for sustainably produced palm oil in their food, soaps, detergents and cosmetics is also growing louder and must not be ignored.7
When the RSPO process started, the oil palm industry had already managed to achieve a bad reputation as a result of its direct involvement in human rights violations and environmental destruction. Documentation of these include Eric Wakker’s 1999 publication, Forest Fires and the Expansion of Indonesia’s Oil Palm Plantations, and one year later, Wakker and others produced the book Funding Forest Destruction.8
In 2001, having documented the impacts of oil plantations over several years, WRM published its first book on the subject (The Bitter Fruit of Oil Palm), which included three case-studies in countries that were major players in Asia (Indonesia), Latin America (Ecuador) and Africa (Cameroon), accompanied by a number of articles describing struggles in those and other countries against oil palm plantations. Apart from the environmental impacts of these plantations, the book documented a large number of human rights violations linked to oil palm expansion.9
The fact that both issues – forest destruction and human rights violations – had been well documented led large corporations linked to the palm oil chain (from plantations to retailers) to think strategically about the negative effects that growing opposition and negative publicity might have on their businesses in the future. What they felt they needed was a mechanism that could certify that the activity – from the production of oil palm fruit to the industrialisation of palm oil – could meet “minimum sustainability criteria” and garner sufficient credibility with importing country governments and consumers.
| No World Bank money for palm oil
Rettet den Regenwald* The World Bank has invested US$2 billion in palm oil cultivation and use since 1965, at least half of it in Indonesia and Malaysia. Palm oil companies such as Wilmar International were regularly granted loans and development funds by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. Over the last 45 years, oil palm plantations have grown eightfold worldwide – 23-fold in Indonesia, according to the World Bank. The World Bank has financed 15 palm oil projects in Indonesia and boasts about the “successful establishment of 100,000 hectares of oil palm plantations”. * Rettet den Regenwald (“Save the rainforest”) is a German-based NGO. For more information, see: http://www.rainforest-rescue.org/index.php |
The “solution”: voluntary certification
The chosen mechanism –the RSPO – was to a large extent modelled on the previous WWF-led process of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). As in the FSC, the RSPO came up with a set of Principles and Criteria resulting from a negotiation process involving a broad range of “stakeholders”; compliance with those standards would be assessed by third-party certification. Both mechanisms also assure consumers that their certified products are sustainably produced: the RSPO through its own name, “Sustainable Palm Oil”, and the FSC through its stated commitment that “products carrying the FSC label are independently certified to assure consumers that they come from forests that are managed to meet the social, economic and ecological needs of present and future generations”.10
The fundamental problem here, however, is that large-scale monoculture tree plantations cannot be socially and ecologically “sustainable”. In the case of FSC, WRM has produced ample documented evidence proving that large-scale monoculture tree plantations are uncertifiable due to their social and environmental impacts.11 The same is true for large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations. The only forms of palm oil production that are ecologically sustainable is that of local communities using natural palm stands in West Africa – where oil palm is a native species.12
However, most of the oil traded internationally – even from West Africa – comes from large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations with profound social and environmental impacts. As with plantations of other trees – such as eucalyptus and pines – the problem is not the species planted but the form and scale in which they are cultivated.
To avoid confusion, it is important to note that industrial production13 of palm oil fruit is carried out in three main forms: 1) large, corporate-owned plantations; 2) smallholder farmers’ land; 3) a combination of both – the “nucleus estate-outgrowers” model. However, in all three cases the result is the same: a large area of contiguous land is occupied by monoculture oil palm plantations.
The impact of such plantations on plant and animal biodiversity is enormous, because they destroy the habitat – usually forest ecosystems – of a large number of species. This impact is magnified by the heavy use of agrotoxins, ranging from herbicides to insecticides, that result in the elimination of yet more animal and plant species. The chemicals pollute local water resources, which are also affected by the extensive drainage systems put in place for the plantations. Monoculture plantations, moreover, provoke erosion, because land formerly covered by forest is cleared prior to plantation, leaving the soil exposed to heavy tropical rains.
The consequences of plantations for local communities are often severe, particularly in corporate-owned plantations that appropriate large areas of land which had hitherto been in the hands of indigenous or peasant populations and had provided for their livelihoods. The dispossession generates resistance from local people, who are then confronted by repression from state forces and the oil palm companies themselves. The violation of land rights is thus typically followed by other human rights violations, including even the right to life.
Leaving aside other social and environmental impacts, it is a well-known fact that most of the plantations owned by companies involved in the RSPO process have been established at the expense of tropical forests. In spite of that, the fruit harvested from those same plantations will be industrialised and sold as “sustainable” palm oil. This is made possible by one of the RSPO’s criteria (7.3), which states that certification will check that “New plantings since November 2005 have not replaced primary forest”. This of course means that all deforestation prior to that date will not be taken into account, and that plantations where such deforestation occurred will still receive the RSPO seal of approval. Given that oil palms can be harvested for up to 30 years, this implies that much of the palm oil traded with the RSPO “sustainable” seal in the next 10–20 years will be harvested from plantations that have “replaced primary forest”.
The scenario most likely to result from the RSPO process is that in the future there will be two production sectors supplying different markets. On the one hand there will be a group of companies with certification that will attempt to a greater or lesser extent to comply with the principles and criteria adopted by the RSPO, while on the other hand there will be a second group of uncertified companies that will continue with “business as usual”. The first will cater for markets like the European Union, where consumers – and governments – demand compliance with certain social and environmental standards, while the second will supply all the other, less demanding markets.
To complicate matters further, what is being certified is not the overall performance of an oil palm company, but specific plantation areas. This means that it is possible that one company will have some of its operations certified under RSPO principles and criteria while it carries out other operations that violate those same principles. This would be a likely scenario in plantations owned by one company in different regions within a country, as well as in different countries.
The final result will be that the cultivation of oil palm will continue to expand, and the accumulated impacts of both “sustainable” and other plantations will continue to have serious impacts on people and their environment. The RSPO will have fulfilled its main objective: growth (as stated in the RSPO website: “Promoting the Growth and Use of Sustainable Palm Oil”).
Global oilpalm area, 1980–2009 from 4.3m to 14.7m hectares
Source: FAOSTAT
Sustainable, improved or greenwashed?
The problem with the RSPO is that it conveys the message that palm oil can be certified as “sustainable”. Confronted with that claim, the only possible response from anyone who knows about the impact of large-scale oil palm monoculture is that RSPO certification is a fraud.
Most people would of course agree that a company that complies with some of the more progressive social and environmental criteria included in the RSPO’s principles and criteria will have improved its performance. Even when the wording of almost every criterion allows for some “flexibility” in its interpretation, some criteria are at least a step forward as compared with currently prevailing practices. For instance, criterion 6.5 establishes that “Pay and conditions for employees and for employees of contractors always meet at least legal or industry minimum standards and are sufficient to provide decent living wages.” It is not much to require “minimum standard” wages, and it is difficult to define what the phrase “decent living wages” means, but it is obviously better than nothing.
Some social organisations, particularly in Indonesia have seen this process as an opportunity for helping to open up political space for indigenous peoples and affected communities. It is clear to them that the RSPO cannot solve the fundamental problems of land tenure and community rights, but it has been successfully used by some communities to assert their rights, and to force member companies to respect the rights of communities affected by their oil palm operations. As some companies attempt to apply the RSPO standard, this is helping to show that companies and the industry overall will not be able to respect indigenous peoples’ and communities’ rights unless there is legal reform.
The bigger question, however, is not whether the RSPO contributes to improving current practices –which it probably will in some cases – but whether it can be a useful means for addressing the industry’s most severe impacts on forests, local peoples, soils, water, biodiversity and climate. And the answer is: no.
With forests, the RSPO legalises past, present and future destruction of all types of forest, with the exception of “primary forests” and “rare, threatened or endangered species and high conservation value habitats”. As for the rights of local people, the criteria do not provide sufficient safeguards against the further expansion of oil palm plantations over their territories, which will deprive them of their lands and means of livelihoods and adversely affect their health. When it comes to soils, water and biodiversity, the RSPO will serve only to disguise the inevitable impacts of oil palm plantation management on these three crucial resources, while forest destruction will add further CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.
Widespread civil society opposition
In contrast to the Forest Stewardship Council – and probably as a result of experience with it – few civil society organisations have joined the RSPO process, and many are actively opposing it.
In October 2008, a large number of national and international organisations responded to the first Latin American meeting of the RSPO with an “International Declaration Against the ‘Greenwashing’ of Palm Oil by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil”.14 The choice of Colombia as the site of the meeting only confirmed the concerns of those organisations. The Colombian military and paramilitary forces have routinely used murder, torture, rape and “disappearances” in evicting whole communities to make way for oil palm plantations.
The declaration called the RSPO “a tool for the expansion of the palm oil business” and “another attempt at camouflaging and denying the true situation, providing ‘a green-wash’ to make a model of production that is intrinsically destructive and socially and environmentally unsustainable, appear to be ‘responsible’.” It gave several reasons for rejecting the RSPO, including:
- that the principles and criteria proposed by RSPO to define sustainability include large-scale plantations;
- that the RSPO is designed to legitimate the continuous expansion of the palm oil industry;
- that any model that includes the conversion of natural habitats into large-scale monoculture plantations cannot, by definition, be sustainable;
- that the RSPO is interested in economic growth and opening up markets for palm oil, not social and environmental sustainability;
- that the RSPO is dominated by industry and does not genuinely consult affected communities;
- that the participation of NGOs in RSPO, such as the WWF, only legitimates an unacceptable process;
- that the RSPO allows companies to certify individual plantations, eluding overall assessment of their whole production.
A year later, just before the RSPO’s 2009 general assembly in Malaysia, an open letter was sent to RSPO and WWF by a number of organisations under the heading “Oil palm monocultures will never be sustainable”.15 The letter stated:
We are deeply concerned that RSPO certification is being used to legitimise an expansion in the demand for palm oil and thus in oil palm plantations, and it serves to greenwash the disastrous social and environmental impacts of the palm oil industry. The RSPO standards do not exclude clear cutting of many natural forests, the destruction of other important ecosystems, nor plantings on peat. The RSPO certifies plantations which impact on the livelihoods of local communities and their environments. The problems are exacerbated by the in-built conflict of interest in the system under which a company wanting to be certified commissions another company to carry out the assessment.
The need to step up the struggle
Regardless of the good intentions of the NGO representatives participating in the RSPO process, or even those of participants from other sectors, it is obvious that the majority of the members and affiliate members of the RSPO do not question the expansion of oil palm monocultures. On the contrary, they are actively seeking to boost both production and consumption in traditional markets (food, soaps, detergents and cosmetics) and in the emerging market of agrofuels. While it is true that many aspects of the production process can be improved, it is equally true that the model as a whole – even with these improvements – continues to be unsustainable.
The RSPO process did not emerge out of the blue, but was in fact an industry response to the many local resistance struggles and national and international campaigns waged to denounce the current situation. Therefore, rather than supporting or opposing the RSPO process, what is most important now is to step up these struggles and campaigns to curb the further advance of this essentially destructive industrial model. The key challenge today is not to improve large-scale monoculture oil palm plantations, but rather to halt their expansion.
1 – This article is an edited version of a briefing by the WRM. The full briefing, which was published in March 2010, can be downloaded from: http://www.wrm.org.uy/publications/briefings/RSPO.pdf
2 – The website of RSPO is: www.rspo.org
3 – Although the concept of sustainability is open to many interpretations, most people would probably agree with the following definition from Wikipedia: “Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of well-being, which in turn depends on the well-being of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.”
4 – See section on oil palm plantations on the WRM’s website at http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/palm.html
5 – http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/241082,greenpeace-first-sustainable-palm-oil-shipment-not-sustainable.html
6 – The RSPO was established in 2004 and the process for starting certification was completed in August 2008
7 – http://www.rspo.org/resource_centre/Press%20Release%20-%20Post%20RT6_1.pdf
8 – Eric Wakker et al., Funding Forest Destruction. The Involvement of Dutch Banks in the Financing of Oil Palm Plantations in Indonesia, Amsterdam, Bogor, Castricum: AIDEnvironment, Telapak and Contrast Advies, 2000.
9 – In September 2006, WRM published a second book: Oil Palm: From Cosmetics to Biodiesel – Colonization Lives On.
10 – http://www.fsc.org/vision_mission.html
11 – See WRM web page section on certification: http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/index.html
12 – Wild groves are harvested by subsistence farmers, who extract the oil by traditional methods. In West Africa, palm oil is a major food item and it is typically used for making foodstuffs, as its natural flavour has a distinguishable effect on dishes. Palm oil is also used to make palm wine and local medicines. The leaves may also be used to make thatches, which are used as roofing material in certain areas.
13 – Harvesting from wild groves or small scale plantations is not considered to be “industrial production”.
14 – See: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/17-11-2008-ENGLISH-RSPOInternational-Declaration.pdf
15 – http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/RSPO_letter.html
GOING FURTHER
WRM, “RSPO: The ‘greening’ of the dark palm oil business”, Montevideo, March 2010.
http://www.wrm.org.uy/publications/briefings/RSPO.pdf
“International Declaration Against the ‘Greenwashing’ of Palm Oil by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil” signed by 256 Organisations.
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/17-11-2008-ENGLISH-RSPOInternational-Declaration.pdf
“Oil palm monocultures will never be sustainable” Open letter to RSPA and WWF.
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/RSPO_letter.html
“Sustainable monocultures no thanks!”, GRAIN, Against the grain, June 2006.
http://www.grain.org/articles_files/atg-6-en.pdf
The WRM website, with a special resource page on plantations: http://www.wrm.org.uy/
War on Trees: Harry Reid, Ag Extension Agents, and Chinese biomass companies promote liquidation of old growth forests… in Nevada
Pinyon and juniper trees, demonized by ranchers, miners and water mining entities, are being eyed by Chinese “biomass” companies with the backing of politicians.
Ken Cole — Wildlife News — January 18, 2011
Pinyon Juniper Forest, Nevada. Photo – Katie Fite
Recently the Nevada Pinyon-Juniper Partnership, aided by USDA, set up a conference to discuss pinyon and juniper trees. At the conference were several players in government and business who have an interest in the removal of pinyon and juniper trees in the Great Basin. Bob Abbey, the director of the BLM, attended the meeting.
Most people don’t think of the Great Basin when they think of old growth forests but the pinyon-juniper forests there are ancient forests with several hundred year old trees that provide important habitats and food for many species of birds like pinyon jays, Clark’s nutcrackers, black throated gray warblers, small mammals, nesting raptors. The charismatic seed-caching Clark’s nutcracker faces catastrophic food shortages in the Rockies due to whitebark pine die-off. It relies on large-seeded pines – and the pinyon pine has a superb large seed that was also vital to supporting Native American cultures in the Great Basin.
The refuge provided by these trees are probably the only reason that central Nevada has any elk at all. They are one of the important components that keep the entire Great Basin Ecosystem together because they retain snow later into the year due to their shade and absorb CO2. Their destruction would promote global warming and desertification by making the area hotter and drier.
The history of animosity towards pinyon juniper trees is a long one. As with sagebrush, for many years ranchers have been getting BLM and FS to use our tax dollars to fund removal of p-j forests to promote livestock forage. They recruited the College of Agriculture at the University of Nevada, Reno, to concoct biased science to justify p-j killing projects. Test projects were initiated, but not evaluated, where p-j forests were chained, cut down or burned, that often resulted in unforeseen (to some) effects such as cheatgrass invasion. A false comparison was concocted where researchers claimed that p-j forests should have an open understory like seen in ponderosa pine forests which are subject to frequent repeated fires. Generally p-j forests are subject to small, spotty fires or major stand replacing fires.
By conveniently ignoring the fact that the p-j forests were heavily utilized during the mining days of the 19th century for fueling smelters, ranchers try to promote the false assertion that p-j are “encroaching” into areas where they previously didn’t grow when, in actuality, they are recolonizing areas where they were cut down. Proposals to destroy p-j forests by dragging huge chains between two tractors were made but they were shot down in court by Western Watersheds Project in 2002 so the proponents of p-j thinning have gone back to the drawing board.
Now it is being claimed that p-j are responsible for reductions in sage grouse populations because sage grouse avoid areas with tall structures or trees used by avian predators for perches to prey on them. This has been a very convenient argument because it distracts away from the fact that a century and a half of overgrazing has brought devastating changes in the form of weeds, sagebrush destruction, soil erosion, increased fire frequency, and other habitat degradation to the lower elevation areas that sage grouse depend on. While the ranchers squeeze the lower elevation habitat they are putting pressure on the agencies to kill p-j on higher elevation habitat under the guise of sage grouse “habitat restoration”.
On top of this pressure from the ranchers, foreign mining companies, who have bought up ranches and gained control of a number of grazing allotments, eye the p-j with disdain because the trees are in the way of expansion of existing and new mines. If the trees are cut down under another guise then it is easier to argue that they should be allowed to expand their operations. Another proponent of p-j thinning in Nevada is the water mining Southern Nevada Water Authority who has also bought up ranches and gained control of a number of grazing allotments. They eye the p-j with disdain because they transpire precious water that they want to mine and pipe to water Las Vegas.
Now a new player enters the p-j matrix. With the support of Senator Harry Reid, county commissioners, and ranchers, A-Power, a Chinese company, is pushing to use the p-j for “biomass” to fuel power generating facilities. Nothing could be more unsustainable than using ancient forests of the Great Basin for biomass.
Interestingly, a Chinese windmill assembly plant near Las Vegas is controlled by an entity named RePower that also has curried favor with Reid.
In an effort to move forward with landscape level p-j destruction projects a number of groups are formulating a plan for a 2 million acre “demonstration project” where they would thin the forests using money from the sales of public lands under the authority of the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act or other federal funds that are supposed to be used for sage grouse restoration. This money would then be funneled through the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition which is a non-profit with a history of funding research which supports vegetation killing under the guise of “habitat restoration”. This would be done to reduce federal contracting requirements. As recently as 2008, current BLM director Bob Abbey was a “trustee” of the ENLC.
Great Basin pine nuts are prized, limited harvest occurs, and the value of nut production would far exceed the value of beef that could be produced by the destroyed land.
An Ecological Bomb in the Mediterranean
The Ships of Poison Cover-Up
By MICHAEL LEONARDI | January 21, 2011
While the global and Italian national media focuses on allegations of Berlusconi’s latest sexual exploits including reports of hedonistic orgies with teenage prostitutes at his luxurious villas, the much more devastating story of the intentional sinking of ships laden with radioactive and toxic materials into the Mediterranean Sea has quietly developed some new twists and turns in another of Italy’s notorious and grand cover-ups. Surely Berlusconi’s sexcapades make Bill Clinton’s impeachable blow job pale in comparison, but the the tabloid headlines could be replaced by the indignation of the Italian Media at least, with the intentional contamination of the beloved blue waters of the Mediterranean and the dismantling of the Italy’s social democracy rather than dedicating the entirety of their attention to prostitutes being paid to entertain one of our most sick and twisted world leaders.
We pick up this story in June of 2010 with the revelations that there is indeed what Italian state prosecutor Bruno Giordano called an “ecological bomb” in the valley of the Oliva river that flows down the mountains and past the towns of Aiello Calabro and Amantea on its way to the Tyrrhenian Sea. This is where it is believed that the cargo of the Jolly Rosso was intentionally dumped and buried. State agencies found the valley to be contaminated with thousands of cubic meters of industrial mud laced with very high levels of cobalt, nickel, mercury, lead, and other heavy metals. They found the presence of cesium 137, and they found more contaminated locations than previously anticipated, leading investigators to believe that not only was the cargo of the Jolly Rosso dumped here but that the area was then used as an illegal dumping grounds for years. There are no industries in this area that produce these materials so it is clear that they were produced and shipped in from other places. A formal request has been made to the minister of the environment Stefania Prestigiacomo to declare this zone an environmental disaster area and to begin cleaning it up. More than six months later there has been NO response.
State secrets still cloak the investigation into the case of what the Italian’s call the Navi dei Veleni Ships of Poison. State secrets still mask the murders of key investigators into the network of international business men, the Italian military, SISMI (the Italian secret service), NATO and state governments as they worked together to create and hide a network of waste and arms trafficking traversing the high Seas from the major Italian port of La Spezia to Alessandria, Egypt, Beruit, Lebanon and onward to Africa and Mogadishu in Somalia. Key investigators into the story of the Ships of Poison, Naval Captain Natale de Grazia, journalist Ilaria Alpi and cameraman Miran Hrovatin lost their lives for what many believe was their discovering of key truths that could expose an international network involving the Italian government that traded military weapons for the disposal of hazardous industrial wastes. Alpi and Hrovatin were gunned down in Mogadishu on the 20th of March 1994 by a Somali commando unit. Captain Natale de Grazia died of sudden cardiac arrest on the 13th of December 1995 only days before he was to deliver his report on his investigation into the Ships of Poison.
Now fast forward to 2011 and several recent developments that should be grabbing headlines. Two Italian journalists, Andrea Palladino, journalist for the communist daily il Manifesto and Vincenzo Mulè, journalist for Terra (Earth) News, have reported on a secret document that has come to the surface in the Parliamentary Commission on the Cycle of Garbage in Italy. This document dated December 11th 1995 describes financing by the Italian government under Lamberto Dini to the Italian Secret Service for the management of trafficking in arms and nuclear waste. While parts of this document have been acknowledged by the parliamentary commission, it still remains state secret. This document became state secret in 1995 and state secrets in Italy are supposed to be bound by a statute of 15 years that should have been up in 2010, however, this document still remains a secret.
Just this week, in an unexpected move from the Parliamentary Commission on the Cycle of Garbage in Italy, the investigation into the murder of journalist Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin was reopened after being closed since 2006. It is believed that Italians paid the Somalis with weapons in exchange for using their sea and land as dumping grounds for toxic and radioactive wastes and that Alpi and Hrovatin had discovered too much. They were gunned down just days after Alpi had interviewed the Sultan of Bosaso, her notes from this interview were never found. Many believe that Alpi was killed because of what she had discovered about the ties between the Italian military and corrupt elements of the Somali leadership. This was all taking place during the time of Blackhawk down and the U.S. led occupation. According to the mafia turncoat Francesco Fonti, they had seen an exchange involving the Italian military and were assassinated for this reason. Their case was reopened because of a note about their deaths that was found among the belongings of Italian businessman Giorgio Comerio by Captain Natale de Grazia’s investigation.
This shady Italian businessman named Giorgio Comerio plays heavily into the reopening of this investigation. Comerio had come up with an idea for disposing of hazardous and radioactive wastes by torpedoing these wastes into the Sea floors. He was notorious for the trafficking of waste and part of a network intent on collecting insurance for old ships that were in need of disposal. His name has been associated with the purchase of the Jolly Rosso, the ship that beached on the shores of Amantea from the Messina shipping company. Old ships it seems are difficult and expensive to dispose of so Comerio and some mafia bosses came up with the bright idea of sinking them and collecting on their insurance policies while at the same time disposing of industrial wastes. Comerio has testified that “disposal at Sea was the only viable option for disposing of radioactive wastes at that time, as sending them off in the space shuttle was too dangerous because of the possibility of an explosion in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
In Captain Natale de Grazia’s investigation he found a report about the killing of Alpi and Hrovatin in Comerio’s files. It has been stated that De Grazia also found a copy of Ilaria Alpi’s death certificate at Comerio’s house on Lago di Como, but that this document disappeared from case files that were in the offices of state prosecutor Francesco Neri in Reggio Calabria. Neri says he remembers this document in the files and that De Grazia’s investigation had discovered it a Comerio’s house but that it has mysteriously disappeared.
Natale de Grazia’s investigation was also focused on another Italian businessman linked to the waste trade from La Spezia. De Grazia was focusing on the major port of La Spezia where NATO operates its undersea research center NURC and where arms and waste shipments are a big business. Orazio Duvia was identified by De Grazia as a key figure in the trafficking of both arms and toxic and radioactive wastes. He was the owner and operator of a mega and quite possibly largest industrial hazardous waste dump in Italy, the landfill of Pittelli on one of the hills overlooking the gulf of La Spezia. According to the research of Andrea Palladino, the CIA looked to the corrupt and criminally operated Pittelli landfill as a model for industrial waste disposal. In May of 1995 De Grazia reported to a group of forest rangers that Duvia’s landfill was one of the logistical platforms for the shipping and sinking of wastes. In this presentation that he made under the code name “pinnochio” in order to protect his identity, he described the sinking of a ship called the Rigel said to be full of nuclear waste and sunk in the waters of the Ionian Sea off the coast of Calabria.
Captain Natale de Grazia was said to be in perfect health by his friends and family. He had however voiced concern about his investigation to his brother in law and had indicated that he may have been treading in dangerous waters as his discoveries led him to conclusions that would be highly uncomfortable for the entire Italian and possibly international power structure. His sudden cardiac arrest happened just days before he was to give his report.
All indicators point to a collusion of forces in this horrific saga of the Ships of Poison, a collusion between SISMI (the Italian secret service), the Italian government, big business, NATO and organized crime families from the Calabrian based crime syndicate l’ndrangheta. Many are now hoping that the reopening of the Ilaria Alpi/Miran Hrovatin case will finally bring the truth to light, but this is doubtful. The Parliamentary Commission on Italy’s Garbage Cycle is being led by a good friend and lawyer of Silvio Belusconi, Gaetano Pecorella. Pecorella began his political career as a radical communist but has moved sharply to the right over the years culminating in what is considered to be the legal mind of the Berlusconi phenomenon. Unless he’s being riddled by some kind of catholic guilt for a life of vile hypocrisy, things don’t bode well for a truly transparent investigation. Pecorella has also defended elements of the Neapolitan based mafia the Camorra noted for its traffic of garbage and creation of the continuing garbage crisis in Naples and surrounding areas.
Italy is at a very critical juncture and whether Berlusconi survives yet again or not is only part of the problem. The Italian economy is in turmoil, the public eduction system is being dismantled and the health care system is under attack while being wrought with corruption. Civil unrest over the past several months has led nowhere but to heightened tensions with an increasingly militarized police state. The country is divided and while a growing majority is crying out for change a large minority still supports the despicable leadership of the neo-fascists running the country. Only time will tell if the mass movement of the past months will bear the fruits of change toward a sustainable economy that are sorely needed. America’s military presence in Italy must be challenged and dismantled for any real change to happen and the center-left has traditionally rubber stamped America’s imperial presence on the peninsula.
Michael Leonardi is currently living in Toledo, Ohio and can be reached at mikeleonardi@hotmail.com
Previous coverage of the Ships of Poison saga.
http://www.counterpunch.org/leonardi09182009.html,
http://www.counterpunch.org/leonardi10092009.html,
http://www.counterpunch.org/leonardi11042009.html .
Related article
Britons protest forests sell-off scheme
Press TV – January 5, 2011
Thousands of Britons have convened a protest in the Forest of Dean against the British government’s plans to sell off some of the country’s forests to the private sector.
More than 3,000 people, backed by celebrities, bishops, leading conservationists and politicians, attending the rally vowed to defend “the people’s” trees from a corporate land grab, the daily Guardian said in a report.
Based on a bill, expected to be debated in the House of Lords within three weeks, to become law, developers, charities and power companies could apply for the entire 650,000-acre forestry commission estate in England.
The government claims it wants more land to be forested and is hoping local communities will buy and manage much of the acreage put up for sale.
But protesters believe the sell-off is short-sighted and fear that woods will be bought by developers and energy companies who will limit access to trails and seek to fell as many trees as possible for a quick profit.
“It is extraordinary that one of the country’s most ancient forests – a place of great beauty that is enjoyed by so many people – is also one of its least protected. The Forest of Dean … should continue to be managed as a whole for the widest public benefit,” said the writer Bill Bryson, president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
“The green heart of Britain is not for sale,” said conservationist David Bellamy.
Today, more than 110,000 people had signed a petition against the coalition’s proposed sale of all Forestry Commission land in England.
Opposition to the sale of nearly 20 percent of all England’s wooded area is fiercest in Gloucestershire where yellow ribbons and posters have been tied around thousands of trees.
More than 30 other crown forests as well as large areas of heathland and bogs currently managed by the Forestry Commission in England are expected to be sold.
“There are no guarantees that income from sales will be used to support forestry,” said Hilary Allison, policy director of the Woodland Trust.
“No decisions have been taken on any particular sites. We will not compromise the protection of our most valuable and bio-diverse forests”, said a spokesman for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Ukraine’s Tymoshenko under probe
Carbon Credits a Tool for Corruption?
Press TV – December 15, 2010
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been ordered to remain in Kiev as part of a criminal investigation into allegations of power abuse.
“She is under a pledge not to leave town,” the general prosecutor’s spokesman Yury Boichenko was quoted as saying by AFP.
Tymoshenko earlier said that the country’s authorities had opened a criminal investigation against her for allegedly misspending state funds Ukraine received from selling greenhouse emission quotas under the Kyoto Protocol.
“I have just learned from an investigator that a criminal probe has been started against me personally because ostensibly environmental money during the crisis was spent on pensions,” she said, adding sarcastically that the probe had been opened “because I committed a grave crime — because I paid people pensions when the country was truly in crisis.”
The former premier told reporters that investigators had questioned her earlier on Wednesday but formal charges had not yet been brought against her in the absence of her lawyer.
Tymoshenko stepped down as prime minister in early March following her loss to pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych in a hard-fought presidential election battle.
Tymoshenko was a key figure in Ukraine’s 2004 orange revolution but later became tied down with internal political disputes after falling out with former President Viktor Yushchenko.
The Environmental Impact Of War
IMAGES OF DEVASTATED battlefields are all too familiar. A German officer in 1918 described ‘dumb, black stumps of shattered trees which still stick up where there used to be villages. Flayed by splinters of bursting shells, they stand like corpses upright. Not a blade of grass anywhere. Just miles of flat, empty, broken and tumbled stone.’ The ploughs in Flanders fields still turn up human bones every year.
But twentieth century technology, busily applied to the practice of war, has ensured a more lethal harvest. For example, landmines: planted in millions in war-torn countries across the world, killing and maiming long after wars are over, and denying agricultural use of the land in which they lurk. A Khmer Rouge general called them ‘the perfect soldier’: cheap, efficient, expendable, never hungry, never needing sleep. But eighty percent of landmine victims are civilians, not soldiers; and nearly a quarter of those are children.
Clearing mines is laborious, dangerous, and 30 times the cost of the weapon itself. So is clearing unexploded ordnance of all kinds (including worldwide munitions dumps which leak toxic wastes). The most severe UXO contamination in the world is in Laos. Bomb disposal teams have no records to work from. ‘It was America’s secret war and we can’t get the information,’ says a team leader. ‘All you can do is teach people to live with the bomb.’
But it’s the testing and manufacture of the nuclear bomb which has been responsible for some of the most profound and persistent environmental damage to life on earth. “The complex mixture of contaminants found on many military sites is dynamically moving through the environment,’ says a medical expert. Radiation problems affect people near nuclear plants in every country that has them. Repair and maintenance of many installations and equipment are dangerously inadequate.
Nuclear waste is a global problem that won’t go away, threatening environmental disaster on a vast scale: its poison, and toxic chemicals which accompany all weapon production, have travelled round the globe in the atmosphere and ocean currents; as well as water and air, they harm earth, plants that grow in it, and subsistent livestock and wildlife. Human exposure to nuclear and chemical tests and factories, or via the food chain, results in miscarriages, malformed foetuses, high infant mortality and congenital disorders, leukaemia and other cancers, tumours, thyroid disorders, and complex debilitating and life-shortening syndromes. The number of reports of such harmful effects on health, habitat and culture – always at risk in war – continues to grow.
Because war disrupts social structures, ecostructures are neglected and abused, with lasting and costly consequences.
All along the coast of Somalia huge sand dunes, 20 miles across, have crept from the sea towards the main coastal highway. ‘When the dunes hit the road, a new road will need to be built,’ says a Red Cross agronomist. ‘There used to be government plans to stop them. Now there’s nothing. The communication breakdown will be a social disaster.’ The ICRC, encouraging self-sufficiency and seawater fish in the conservative Somali diet, provided boats, nets, hooks and training – only to discover another of war’s ecological chain effects: the coastal waters off Somalia had become a free-for-all, all protocols for international fishing rights ignored. Resources are being fished unsustainably – ‘almost a mining operation,’ says a UN observer. Illegal fishermen now go armed, to protect what they perceive as their property rights.
It’s widely agreed that Sudan’s 1988 famine was caused by its protracted civil war. Southern Sudan has some of the most productive land in Africa; its people are hardworking farmers and herdsmen. If fighting stopped, they’d manage to survive. Instead, thousands have been forced out of their homes, thousands have died, and their land is uncared-for.
‘Most disasters are like this: a mess of war, displacement, hunger and ignorance,’ says Africa specialist John Ryle. ‘To feed the hungry and treat the sick in such circumstances is to become part of the war economy. Part of what aid workers do involves clearing up the chaos left by the global arms trade. They say they are saving lives – but for what? To be lost in endless wars that feed on aid?’
Meanwhile the worst outbreak of sleeping sickness this century has been spreading through the south-west; disease follows war everywhere.
The earth’s environment is battered by war, its preparation, practice and aftermath. It is destroyed as an act of war; it is used as a weapon of war; and its destruction is expensive and sometimes irreversible. Its integral involvement with war is often secret, widely ignored, and easily forgotten – until now.
Now, some people are beginning to talk and listen. Some people are beginning to act. There is a treaty to ban landmines now. There are moves towards tackling the problems of nuclear waste and weapon stockpiles. There is a growing global awareness – with charters to prove it – that war has created consequences which cross boundaries and ignore territories. Natural disasters are costly enough; the cost of war damage is much higher. Even if politics don’t achieve change, economics might.
It’s the natural tendency of governments to suppress or talk down bad news. So it’s the duty of the rest of us – to uncover and publicise it wherever possible. Without the facts, there can’t be informed public opinion, nor a corporate will to deal with the disasters that war creates – dangerous not only for combatants but for civilians, not only for the duration of the war but far into the future, not for warring countries alone but for the whole world.
In one way or another, everyone is already affected. In one way or another, the still-quickening rush to even greater disasters must be stopped.
And the first thing to go must be war.
Settlements Wiping Out Natural Life in the Jordan Valley
Mazim Qumsiyeh | 18 November 2010
We spent two days in the Auja area north of Jericho on a field trip to survey what remains of the animals and plants in one of hundreds of areas directly devastated by Israeli occupation policies. Our host and guide was Mubarak Zawahra, a father of seven young children who lives near Bethlehem but his mother and many of his brothers live in the Jordan valley.
- The path of Wadi Auja spring, now dry
Before their lives were restricted and devastated by the occupation they usually held two locations (one for the winter months and one for the summer months). They relied on their flocks of sheep and goats that they grazed in the wide open areas around the two locations. They also raised pigeons and chickens and occasionally planted crops.
Mubarak’s father was so successful at what he did that at one point he and his 16 children had over 1000 heads of sheep and goats. It was very hard work. Their life meant covering many miles every day to reduce overgrazing. Spending over 12 hours daily walking rough terrains, Bedouins come to know every path, wadi, tree and cave over vast areas. Their encyclopedic knowledge of their surroundings is astounding. They have stories to tell you about every feature of their landscape, every animal and every plant. Even as a seasoned biologist, I always learn new things about nature from going out with Bedouins. They have unique names even for the different species of desert land snails. They can tell you of natural treatments to different maladies.
While Bedouin life was difficult, it was a life that functioned in harmony with nature for thousands of years. Their generousity and kindness to strangers is legendary. Disputes were mostly solved by traditional tribal laws. The fields were not overgrazed and nature was left unspoiled. Tranquillity prevailed as Mubarak told me in the evening after a very hard day of work in the fields. The best time was to sit after a meal, drink strong sweet tea seasoned with wild mint surrounded by loved ones and look at clear skies dotted with brilliant stars.
That life is slowly ending. The Zawahra’s saga is just an example. Colonial Jewish settlements in two main locations of the Zawahra’s domain (in the hills around Bethlehem and in the Jordan valley) have made it impossible for the Zawahras to continue the Bedouin way of life. In the Bethlehem district, Israeli colonies, security zones, and army bases now control the vast majority of the rich lands. The remaining land is basically the developed Palestinian areas with few open areas. With less than 5% of the open range areas of the Bethlehem district left available for grazing, the effects have been devastating. Animal numbers have decreased significantly (while the human population has tripled in the past 45 years), and overgrazing has had an appalling ecological effect.
- An illegal Israeli colony near the village of Al-Auja.
It is sad to compare biodiversity in the Bethlehem area today with what I saw 40 years ago. Many animal and plant species can no longer be found in the hills of Bethlehem. Some areas are so barren that the only living animals I can see in the late summer and fall months are humans, goats (more hardy than sheep), and flies. 40 years ago, I could show you at least 40 species in two hours.
The second domain of the Zawahras is in the Jordan valley a few kilometres north of Jericho in the Wadi Auja area. Until recently, this valley had until a water flow year round estimated at 9 million cubic meters coming from the hills near Ramallah and flowing into the Jordan valley to feed the river Jordan. It made a beautiful oasis that attracted thousands of visitors year round for recreation. Downstream, agriculture flourished. Farms had been established and the tranquil village of Auja with 7000 Christian, Muslim and Bedouin farmers living comfortably.
My schoolmate Imad Mukarkar took me to his family farm there when we were in high school 35 years ago and I remember bountiful citrus fruit, bananas and vegetables of all kinds. On Tuesday night as we stretched nets to catch bats with his brother Khalid who is struggling to maintain the family farm. He explained how even the well water he relied on is decreasing in output both in quality and quantity while the settlers nearby have unlimited water to grow corn and even watermelons. A way of life is slowly being squeezed for the Palestinians and created for colonial settlers. These settlers looking for short term gains have no clue about the long term consequences of their policies.
Stealing water via pipes at the hills and bringing it to the Jewish settlements dried up the natural flow of water in Wadi Auja. The oasis is no longer an oasis. The valley now has water only in the brief rainy season (two months at best). The crisis of water is so desperate that winter rain runoff is collected via a dam, adding to the changes created by the Israeli water theft. Desertification has thus accelerated. The rich valley fauna and flora was devastated. We did manage to record three species of scorpions, two species of bats, spiny mice, five species of birds, two lizards, a desert fox, and struggling desert trees and shrubs. We were interrupted once by an Israeli military patrol who wanted to know what we were doing and seemed bemused by our scorpions. One soldier stated that they kill many of them. I did not want to argue but I did think in my mind that scorpions are preferable to some people since they kill only for food or to defend themselves.
Comparing field work now and three decades ago, we can see dramatic differences. For example I distinctly recall seeing over 20 species of birds seen in one morning. Now we find no frogs, an important environmental indicator, when there used to be plenty. The loss of biodiversity meant a loss of livelihood for the native Palestinians who live in this area. The Zawahra family who had hundreds of sheep and goats now have few animals and struggle to find menial jobs to make a living. Farmers like Khalid Mukarker who used to get plentiful agricultural produce have seen their costs quadruple and their output decline. Local animals and plants lost are irreplaceable.
The quality of water and air deteriorates each year, which will make it eventually impossible even for the colonial settlers to continue to live here. Short term political thinking of Zionists once again trumps long term planning. There is clearly a heavy economic and ecological cost of colonialism. Urgent studies and documentation are needed for areas like Al-Auja and increased activism to end this colonial occupation as quickly as possible. Time is not on our (human) side. Very soon, the damages done to the environment will make life impossible for all of us (Jews, Christians, Muslims, other animals, and plants) in this (un)holy Land.
Thanks to Mubarak, his family, my wife, my student Michael and his brother Majd for help in making this trip successful.
The History of Agent Orange
SensoryOssuary | May 26, 2008
This is a clip from the French documentary “The World According to Monsanto.” It summarizes the history of Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide produced by Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and other companies. It was sprayed extensively during the Vietnam War, leading to a horrific variety of adverse health effects. Monsanto conducted deliberately flawed and coercive studies to “prove” that Agent Orange was safe, causing many Vietnam veterans to be denied sufficient health benefits.
In the late 1990’s, Monsanto changed its focus from chemicals like Agent Orange to biotechnology. It now indirectly controls approximately 60% of the world food supply. Monsanto insists that its genetically modified crops are safe.
Chernobyl region to be put back under the plow for EU biodiesel mandate
RIA NOVOSTI | November 12, 2010
Ukrainian officials are studying the possibility of growing crops in the 30-km zone of radioactive pollution near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, a popular Russian daily said on Friday.
A number of Ukrainian services and departments are conducting numerous studies to establish “areas that could be used for agriculture, some partially and some in full,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted acting head of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry Mykhailo Bolotskykh, as saying.
An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 resulted in highly radioactive fallout in the atmosphere over an extensive area. A 30-kilometer (19-mile) exclusion zone was introduced following the accident.
Vast areas, mainly in the three then-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, were contaminated by the fallout from the major nuclear meltdown. Some 200,000 people were relocated after the accident.
The agriculture revival plan, initiated by the European Union, proposes cultivating rapeseed, also known as canola oil and widely seen as the most popular primary product to produce biodiesel, in the contaminated area. Similar plans have earlier been voiced by Belarus, another country severely affected by the Chernobyl disaster.
“This crop has great potential, with the European Union, the U.A.E., Turkey and Pakistan expressing their readiness to buy it from Ukraine. This is really profitable,” a source close to the Ukrainian government told the newspaper.
Ukraine is currently among Europe’s largest rapeseed producers.
“The problem is that rapeseed depletes the soil. It may be grown only as part of a five-year crop rotation cycle. Or, it may be grown on lands which have no agricultural importance,” he said.
The government did not comment on the information.
The paper quotes an expert as saying that scientists have developed mechanisms of rehabilitating nuclear-polluted soil, which include growing certain crops and combining various types of fertilizers.
“Experiments show that… areas where rehabilitation measures were conducted can produce crops with almost normal radionuclide levels, hundreds of times lower than those where such measures were not taken,” the unnamed scientist told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
But many experts say that any attempt to cultivate crops in Chernobyl is “simply a crime,” saying that many dangerous isotopes buried in soil could be released back into the air and water when the polluted soil is ploughed.
“It is simply a crime – increasing air and water pollution by turning over polluted soil,” a former official with the country’s radiation and ecology watchdog said.
The plan is expected to be officially announced in March 2011, shortly before the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
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Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026
The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.
A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.
She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.
What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. … continue
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