Okonski, K

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mrs julian morris<a href="https://theecologist.org/2018/oct/22/love-anger-and-oil-funding-behind-climate-denial">https://theecologist.org/2018/oct/22/love-anger-and-oil-funding-behind-climate-denial</a>oct 2018j <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/julian-morris" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline: 0px;">Morris</a>, as president and founder of the <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2015/05/05/how-exxonmobil-s-spending-bonanza-helped-two-british-climate-sceptics-set-international-free-market-think-tank" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">International Policy Network</a> (IPN), was leading the British charge against climate science and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2003.The London-based free market think tank published Adapt or Die: The Science, Politics and Economics of Climate Change just in time for the climate negotiations at the Conference of the Parties (COP) summit held in Milan in December. The contributor list to Adapt or Die was a veritable directory of climate sceptics from both the UK and the US.The foreword by University of London professor <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Philip_Stott" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Philip Stott</a> opens with: “This book is both important and timely because it confronts one of the most tenacious myths of the new millennium, namely the dangerously mistaken belief that the correct approach to climate change is to try and ‘manage’ climate itself.”Beautiful, engagedMorris contributed a chapter under the title Warming Aid, Chilling Trade, in which he made the rather hilarious claim that “The international establishment, including environmentalists… have bullied two of the world’s three largest oil producers into accepting the basic proposition that global control of energy resources is really necessary.”The book was edited by Morris’s wife, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kendra_Okonski" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Kendra Okonski</a>, who was also working at the IPN.The two met when Okonski was working as a research assistant for climate denier <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/12/13/how-free-market-baptist-fred-smith-sold-out-to-the-big-oil-bootleggers" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Fred Smith</a> at the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/competitive-enterprise-institute" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a> (CEI) – funded by Philip Morris, Dow Chemicals and ExxonMobil – after graduating from a free market college.Okonski had gained a reputation, even among the free market zealots, as being “fiery” and determined.Morris had been speaking at a conference called the Precautionary Principle held by American non-profit organisation Consumer Alert three years earlier, when Okonski was swept off her feet by his chiselled good looks and devotion to the free markets.Smith recalls: “He was delivering a speech; he looked down at Kendra, with her big eyes, and thought: ‘scary’. It was a public policy marriage.”Morris said: “Kendra is a beautiful, engaged and inspiring woman; she is the love of my life. We share a deep desire to improve the lot of humanity through the empowering institutions of a free society: property rights, markets and the rule of law. So far as I am aware, we came to those ideas independently, but I cannot speak for Kendra.”Exxon FundingAt the time of Adapt or Die’s publication, the IPN was being heavily funded by ExxonMobil.In 2003, the oil company donated $50,000 to Morris, his wife and their small team in Covent Garden. This would have nearly covered the entire £51,732 spent on their “climate change and sustainable development programme”.The following year, this was increased to $115,000 in recognition of their excellent work in attacking climate science.Martin Agerup, a contributor to Adapt or Die, was invited to London by Morris and Okonski to give a workshop on how to run a think tank. He saw no indication of generous funders behind the scenes.“I even stayed at their private flat once, when they invited me over, and they were very cost-conscious. I think they were running on a very tight budget. I remember that they were very concerned… When I was invited over I had to fly Ryanair or something like that. A really, really cheap ticket.”He added: “Climate was their pet issue, something they found really interesting but had difficulties finding funding for that, I think.”Sceptic Think TanksOverall, ExxonMobil gave a total of £3.5 million to climate sceptic think tanks in the US during 2003.The American Enterprise Institute was given $225,000, the Cato Institute $25,000 and the Marshall Institute $25,000. The oil giant donated a further $50,000 to the Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs the following year for “climate change issues”.This was entirely unrelated to the fact that the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/institute-economic-affairs" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Institute of Economic Affairs</a> (IEA) in London had just published Climate Alarmism Reconsidered by Dr <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/robert-l-bradley-jr" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Robert Bradley</a>.In the book’s foreword, Philip Booth, the IEA's Editorial and Programme Director, wrote: “scary climate scenarios are not supported by the balance of evidence. What is known with far more confidence is that a moderately warmer and wetter world has significant benefits to offset costs for many decades to come.”The publication was written with the help of the Morris, CEI and Exxon-funded scientists <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Richard Lindzen</a> and <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/patrick-michaels" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Pat Michaels</a>.Morris remained busy going into 2004. He gave a presentation at free marketeer <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/12/16/friedrich-von-hayek-s-free-market-legacy" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Friedrich </a><a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/12/16/friedrich-von-hayek-s-free-market-legacy" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">von H</a><a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/2014/12/16/friedrich-von-hayek-s-free-market-legacy" target="blank" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">ayek</a>’s old stomping ground, the Mont Pelerin Society – one of many neoliberal think tanks that Hayek set up – and told the assembled economists that it would be the free market rather than regulations that would solve the problem of climate change, if there were indeed a problem.This AuthorBrendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/impact-of-market-forces-on-addictive-substances-and-behaviours-9780198753261?cc=gb&lang=en&" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">The web of influence</a> of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Desmog.uk</a>.=<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/think-tanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html">https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/think-tanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html</a>2/10<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.<div id="thirdparty01" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /><div id="article-im-prompt" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative;" /><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Many of these critics have broadcast material from the leaked UEA emails to undermine climate change predictions and to highlight errors in claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Professor Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood down as director of UEA's climactic research unit, is reported in today's Sunday Times to have "several times" considered suicide. He also drew parallels between his case and that of Dr David Kelly, found dead in the wake of the row over the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Professor Jones said he was taking sleeping pills and beta-blockers and had received two death threats in the past week alone.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Climate sceptic bloggers broadcast stories last week casting doubts on scientific data predicting dramatic loss of the Amazon rainforest. All three stories, picked up by mainstream media, questioned the credibility of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way it does its work. A new attack on climate science, already dubbed "Seagate" by sceptics, relating to claims that more than half the Netherlands is in danger of being submerged under rising sea levels, is likely to be at the centre of the newest skirmish in coming weeks.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">The controversies have shaken the IPCC, whose chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was subjected to a series of personal attacks on his reputation and lifestyle last week. A poll this weekend confirmed that public confidence in the climate change consensus has been shaken: one in four Britons – 25 per cent – now say they do not believe in global warming; previously this figure stood at 15 per cent.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chairman of the IPCC, said yesterday that the backlash is the result of a campaign: "It does appear that there's a concerted effort by a number of sceptics to undermine the credibility of the evidence behind human-induced climate change." He added: "I am sure there are some sceptics who may well be funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty."<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company's reports.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world's leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?", it was organised by the Heartland Institute – a group that described the event as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics". The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">A large British contingent was present at the event, with speakers including Dr Benny Peiser, from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); the botanist David Bellamy; Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski from the London-based International Policy Network; the weather forecaster Piers Corbyn; Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher; and Professor David Henderson, a member of GWPF's advisory council. Speakers at the event also included two prominent climate bloggers who associate with Paul Dennis, a 54-year-old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia who has been questioned by police investigating the theft of climate data.<div id="thirdparty02" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /><div class="ad-perform js-ad-placeholder js-ad-placeholder--perform" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">In a posting on the blog of the climate sceptic Andrew Montford on Friday, Mr Dennis insisted: "I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it."<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">But he confirmed that he had been in email contact with Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org – a site that was one of the first to receive an anonymous link to the original leaked data from UEA.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mr Dennis said he emailed Mr McIntyre to alert him to a "departmental email saying that emails and files were hacked" and that "police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id [a pseudonym for the climate sceptic Patrick Condon]. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me."<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">The UEA researcher also has connections with another prominent sceptic, Anthony Watts, with whom he has posted and who spoke beside Mr McIntyre. Mr Dennis was not available for comment.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "A lot of the climate sceptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding."<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">But Dr Richard North, a climate change sceptic and blogger, rejected claims of a conspiracy as "laughable" and denied having any links to vested interests. "Anybody who knows me knows I'm a loner. Nobody tells me what to do or dictates my agenda."<p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 16px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; vertical-align: baseline;">ExxonMobil said in a statement: "We have the same concerns as people everywhere – and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions."2006 cspan water aei<a href="https://www.c-span.org/person/?kendraokonski">https://www.c-span.org/person/?kendraokonski</a><h3 class="title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 30px 35px 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;">https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendraokonski</h3><h3 class="title" style="margin: 0px; padding: 30px 35px 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;">Organizations</h3><ul style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none;"><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 30px 35px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; overflow: hidden;"><header style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><h4 class="item-title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mont Pelerin Society</h4><h5 class="item-subtitle" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Member</h5></header></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 30px 35px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; overflow: hidden;"><header style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><h4 class="item-title" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;">Network for a Free Society</h4><h5 class="item-subtitle" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trustee</h5></header><div class="meta no-image" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 14px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="date-range" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Starting <time style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">2011</time></div></li></ul>scrapeHelen DisneyFounder, Unblocked. Member, Innovate Finance's Women in Fintech Power List 2016
Marti Hoffer, LCFounder at lumenomics
Rupert MunroDirector of Development at PERC
David FischerUniversity Professor at Brandeis University
Arik GrosfieldFreelance Writer
Rasha SharhanMS Candidate, Actuarial Science at UT Dallas
Brian HooksPresident, Charles Koch Foundation & Charles Koch Institute
Sharon Downs--
Jennifer Kuzma RostAssistant to CEO at Pinnacle Treatment Centers
Julian MorrisVice President at Reason FoundationTCC<ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" color="color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kendra_Okonski" title="Kendra Okonski" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Kendra Okonski</a> - During the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, Okonski wrote an article for the TechCentralStation web site, stating that "Africans are sacrificed on the altar of trendy green delusions." Okonski works as co-ordinator for the London-based IPN and as the press contact for the SDN. She formerly worked with the Washington-based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute" title="Competitive Enterprise Institute" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a> (CEI). <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2003Q1/gm.html" style="text-decoration: none; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) right center no-repeat, url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" csvg="Csvg" http="http" a="A" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" cg="Cg" transform="transform" translate="translate" crect="Crect" x="x" y="y" fill="fill" fff="fff" stroke="stroke" cpath="Cpath" m831.194="M831.194" h5.234v5.391l-1.571="h5.234v5.391l-1.571" z="z" m835.424="M835.424" l.022="l.022" fg="Fg" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data">[1]</a></li></ul>fake paradehttps://www.saynotogmos.org/news_exposing_2.htm<a href="http://desmog.uk/2015/06/04/how-free-market-friendship-between-julian-morris-and-roger-bate-came-end">http://desmog.uk/2015/06/04/how-free-market-friendship-between-julian-morris-and-roger-bate-came-end</a>This DeSmog UK epic history post recalls the falling out between long-term friends and free marketeers Julian Morris and Roger Bate.The free market <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2015/05/22/how-julian-morris-led-british-charge-against-climate-science-2003" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">International Policy Network</a> (IPN) was launched amid much fanfare in 2001 with Julian Morris and Roger Bate at the helm. Almost immediately John Blundell, the director of the Institute of Economic Affairs and IPN board member closed down the Environment Unit.The war against climate science was about to embark on a new journey, with a purpose built think tank ready to take to the front line. The IPN would try and convince the world that free market economics - and climate denial - were in the interests of the poorest people and the most impoverished countries.The IPN tried at first to keep its funding from ExxonMobil and British American Tobacco secret, fearing journalists would not take them seriously if the vested interests of their financial backers were known. And it was only a few years before Morris and Bate apparently fell out - with Bate being the first of the three men to leave for the United States.Morris and Bate were<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/07/how-two-students-took-climate-denial-bate" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"> long-term friends </a>and started a company together, and were known to most people in the sceptic community as a brilliant double act. Intense and ObsessiveProfessor James Tooley, a member of the IEA advisory council, worked closely with the two men at the IEA. He said: “Roger was definitely the boss at the time Julian took over.“Roger came across as the most sophisticated, Julian was more sort of the person who pushed, who got things going, more solid, cerebral I think the word is.”Roger Scruton, the popular philosopher once paid as a consultant to tobacco, describes his friend, Bate, as “a more serious intellectual”, “intense” and “obsessive”.Bate, however, retained very close ties with climate denier <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/12/13/how-free-market-baptist-fred-smith-sold-out-to-the-big-oil-bootleggers" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Fred Smith</a> at the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/competitive-enterprise-institute" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a> (CEI) in the US – funded by Philip Morris, Dow Chemicals and ExxonMobil – and his work at the environment unit appears to have been less than full time.He described himself in 2000 as a fellow in International Policy at the CEI in Washington. Soon after, colleagues began to suspect that the close friendship between Bate and Morris was under strain.Internal DisputeDr Pennington, an academic advisor to the early environment unit, told me that there had been an “internal dispute” and the two men had “fallen out with each other”.He added: “It just was dysfunctional… Roger was concerned about Julian Morris’s partner. They had different approaches, they just fell out like people in offices do.”The relationships among the think tank staff were certainly intimate, which would have increased the potential for personal disputes.Bate was, around this time, registered as living in Cambridge with his lover, Lorraine Mooney, the company secretary at his charity: the European Science and Environment Forum.Workplace GossipBut, whispered gossip began to circulate around the office that Bate was concerned about the quality of work delivered by Morris’s wife and IPN employee, Kendra Okonski. The accounts for the IPN show that, in 2005, the IPN was paying Okonski £28,000 and that she claimed £4,448 in expenses. Another member of the IPN staff said: “This is rumour… but Bate had disagreements with Julian over Kendra.”Then, in 2003, the dispute appears to have reached an impasse as Bate resigned as a director of the IPN and moved to the United States. The following year, he was earning $100,000 a year for a 30-hour week as chairman of Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM), which was receiving $30,000 from ExxonMobil for “climate change outreach”.He was also hired as a fellow by the American Enterprise Institute, which enjoyed funding from Koch, Exxon and major tobacco companies, although he drifted away from the subject of climate change.Julian Morris told DeSmog UK  at the weekend: “As usual, you get most of your facts wrong and make claims based on alleged hearsay that strike me as implausible.“IPN was founded in 2001 with Roger and I as co-directors and John Blundell, Linda Whetstone and Mike Fisher as board members. As I recall, the IEA terminated the environment and technology programme when I moved over to IPN because the programme no longer had a director, not the other way round. Roger and I remained research fellows at the IEA for a while after that.“Salaries at International Policy Network were determined by the organization’s board, not by me. I was not on the board in 2005. Kendra’s expenses were approved by the chairman, Linda Whetstone. We were very diligent to avoid such conflicts of interest.”Next time in the epic history series we recall how Dr Benny Peiser transformed from Marxist radical to director of Lord Lawson’s climate denial charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.<a href="https://twitter.com/brendanmontague" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">@brendanmontague</a>from conkoGiven Conko's leading role in AgBioWorld, it would be interesting to know his exact relationship with Monsanto's PR team, particularly Jay Byrne - Monsanto's chief Internet strategist at the time AgBioWorld was established. Byrne has ackowledged giving AgBioWorld "advice and information" and both Monsanto and its Internet PR company the Bivings Group have played a covert role in shaping and supporting AgBioWorld's online campaigning. Monsanto is among the companies funding the CEI (see U.S. FACING TOUGH BATTLE FOR GE CROPS by Bob Burton, IPS-Inter Press Service April 1, 2004)Conko's many publications include papers promoting GM foods and free trade and attacking the precautionary principle, co-authored with CS Prakash, Henry I. Miller, Fred Smith and Kendra Okonski. Among these is "Cloudy horizons in a brave new world", originally published on the European Science and Economic Forum website. In it Conko suggests that concerns about the safety of GM food are merely a cover for "trade protectionism" and "anti-science fearmongering".[4]In March 2003 Conko took part in a debate on 'GM food: should labelling be mandatory?' held at the London office of PR agency Hill and Knowlton and organised by Spiked and the International Policy Network. Conko argued against any requirement to label GM foods, saying:mandatory labelling will merely raise the cost of GM products, and add to many consumers' groundless fears about GM foods.[5]In May 2003, Conko was at the press conference at which the US Trade Secretary formally announced a US WTO case against EU restrictions on GM imports. This was followed by a CEI seminar on the negative impact of the EU moratorium on the developing world, addressed by Conko, Norman Borlaug, CS Prakash, and TJ Buthelezi.....CEI's President and Founder is Fred Smith. Its staff include Gregory Conko who is CEI's Director of Food Safety Policy. Via Conko CEI has played a key role in CS Prakash's AgBioWorld campaign .
The launch-pad for Prakash's campaign was a petition supporting the use of GM agriculture in developing countries. Prakash presented this as a Third World scientists' rallying point for fellow academics. However, CEI in its annual report (2000) says that it played 'a key role in the creation' of the petition as part of a wider campaign against 'death by regulation' - the same CEI campaign that has been directed against government efforts to discourage smoking because, according to the CEI, 'there are things more valuable than health'. More recently, Greg Conko has been acknowledged in AgBioWorld press releases as the co-founder of AgBioWorld .Among CEI's long list of known sponsors are Philip Morris, Pfizer and Dow Chemicals. In 2000 CEI had a turnover of $3M+ a year with another million in assets.CEI's 'Adjunct Scholars' include Henry Miller of the Hoover Institution and Fran Smith of Consumer Alert. Fran Smith is also on CEI's Board of Directors. She is also the wife of CEI's President and Founder. Another CEI 'Adjunct' is Roger Bate of the International Policy Network - a group whose Washington address is the same as that of the CEI.Kendra Okonski of IPN also used to work for CEI. When ABC-TV's 20/20 program presenter John Stossel came under fire in August 2000 for citing nonexistent scientific studies in a 20/20 report attacking organic foods, Okonski organised a Save John Stossel website for the CEI to help Stossel keep his job.Another CEI 'Adjunct' is Ronald Bailey, the science editor of Reason magazine and the first recipient of CEI's Warren T. Brookes Fellowship in Environmental Journalism.CSR_{:}In March 2001, CEI joined the American Council on Science and Health, Steve Milloy, Dennis Avery, and Consumer Alert in an open letter criticizing Starbucks for its decision, in response to protests, to stop serving milk products from cows treated with Monsanto's genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH aka BST), which is banned in all the main industrialised countries in the world other than the United States. 'Your action is unfounded, and harms consumers and the environment', they stated. The CEI's Kendra Okonski , wearing her 'counter protest' hat, organised a counter-demonstration outside Starbucks in Washington.
In March 2002 CEI, exploiting the concerns raised by September 11, co-sponsored a conference for journalists and corporate executives on 'eco-extremism' with CDFE-connnected PR firm Nichols Dezenhall. (You too might be a terrorist. The war on the greens)...http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=31
Greg Conko is the Director of Food Safety Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) where he he 'specialises in issues of food and pharmaceutical drug safety regulation, and on the general treatment of health risks in public policy'. He is described as 'particularly interested in the debate over the safety of genetically engineered foods and the application of the Precautionary Principle to domestic and international environmental and safety regulations'.
Although Conko's leading role in C S Prakash's AgBioWorld campaign has only lately been acknowledged by AgBioWorld, the CEI has been more open, describing him as ' the Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the AgBioWorld Foundation, [which] he co-founded with Tuskegee University plant genetics professor C.S. Prakash'.
Given Conko's leading role in AgBioWorld, it would be interesting to know his exact relationship with Monsanto's PR team, particularly Jay Byrne - Monsanto's chief Internet strategist at the time AgBioWorld was established. Byrne has ackowledged giving AgBioWorld 'advice and information' and both Monsanto and its Internet PR company Bivings have played a covert role in shaping and supporting AgBioWorld's online campaigning.
Conko's many publications include papers, promoting GM foods and free trade and attacking the precautionary principle, co-authored with CS Prakash, Henry Miller, Fred Smith and Kendra Okonski. Amongst these is 'Cloudy horizons in a brave new world', originally published on the European Science and Economic Forum website. In it Conko suggests that concerns about the safety of GM food are merely a cover for 'trade protectionism' and 'anti-science fearmongering'.
In March 2003 Conko took part in a debate on 'GM food: should labelling be mandatory?' held at the London office of PR agency Hill and Knowlton and organised by Spiked and the International Policy Network. Conko argued against any requirement to label GM foods. In May 2003, Conko was at the press conference at which the US Trade Secretary formally announced a US WTO case against EU restrictions on GM imports. This was followed by a CEI seminar on the negative impact of the EU moratorium on the developing world, addressed by Conko, Norman Borlaug, C. S. Prakash, and T.J. Buthelezi.heartland:Kendra Okonski has worked for International Policy Network, a London-based think tank, since 2001. From 2003 to 2007 she was its environment programme director, and in that capacity she has edited or co-edited several books and publications, including The Water Revolution (2006), Montana: On the Verge of Collapse? (2006), Adapt or Die (2003), and an edition of the peer-reviewed journal Energy and the Environment. She frequently contributes to print and broadcast media on development and environment issues. Okonski is a council member [?]of the University of Buckingham (UK) and a fellow of Britain’s Royal Society for the Arts. [smc prof]Prior to her work at IPN, she worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (Washington, DC).+ ACTIVISTS PUT CHILDREN'S HEALTH AT RISK, SAY KENDRA & A SURPRISING NUMBER OF OTHERSNow here's a funny thing. An article appears in (LM-connected) Spiked-online in which Prof Sir Colin Berry of the Scientific Alliance attacks the precautionary principle, making specific reference to the dangers of over-precaution in relation to children.  http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3974The article refers to an upcoming World Health Organisation conference on "Children's heath and the environment" in Budapest, where ministers from 52 countries will negotiate regulations to protect people, especially children, from environmental health risks. And, as it happens, children's health is also the focus of a campaign from the International Policy Network (IPN), a group that lobbies for de-regulation and what it calls "sound science".Recent IPN press releases include "Excessive 'precaution' puts children's lives at risk; WHO and governments must prioritise, say experts" and "Wealth means health".One press release on the IPN's website promotes a new book edited by Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski: Environment & Health: Myths & Realities ("New book debunks environment, health myths Issues exaggerated by activists for political agendas, say scientists").Kendra, it may be remembered, came to fame at the World Summit on Sustainable Development when she served as principle cheerleader to The Fake Parade. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?ArcId=288Since then she has continued as Julian Morris's sidekick, winning fame for her attacks on climate change science, sustainable development and fair trade.Dr Ignacio Chapela comments on Okonski's and Morris's new IPN book: "It seems, from the description of its wisdom, that the main risk to human health and survival in our times is the little bunch of crazy activists who are planting scare stories that are more destructive than dirty nukes. Take note."As explained in the press release, 'issues' are exaggerated by activists for political agendas, which is why the book is published to set the record straight - the fact that its publication and media campaign was timed to coincide with the 'Future of Children' meeting of the WHO in Budapest is a mere coincidence and NOT related to furthering political agendas, of course."For more on the IPN, Kendra, etc., see http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=155&page=I=4 December 2002THE FAKE PARADEhttp://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=254 
Environment, 3 December 2002 
THE FAKE PARADE 
Under the banner of populist protest, multinational corporations manufacture the poor 
By Jonathan Matthews"Carrying his placard the man in front of me was clearly one of the poorest of the poor. His shoes were not only threadbare, they were tattered, merely rags barely being held together."So begins a graphic description of a demonstration that took place at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg. The protesters were "mainly poor, virtually all black, and mostly women... street traders and farmers" with an unpalatable message. As an article in a South African periodical put it, "Surely this must have been the environmentalists‚ worst nightmare. Real poor people marching in the streets and demanding development while opposing the eco-agenda of the Green Left." And seldom can the views of the poor, in this case a few hundred demonstrators, have been paid so much attention. Articles highlighting the Johannesburg march popped up the world over, in Africa, North America, India, Australia and Israel. In Britain even The Times ran a commentary, under the heading, "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me".With the summit's passing, the Johannesburg march, far from fading from view, has taken on a still deeper significance. In the November issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, Val Giddings, the President of the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO), argues that the event marked "something new, something very big" that will make us "look back on Johannesburg as something of a watershed event - a turning point." What made the march so pivotal, he said, was that for the very first time, "real, live, developing-world farmers" were "speaking for themselves" and challenging the "empty arguments of the self-appointed individuals who have professed to speak on their behalf."To help give them a voice, Giddings singles out the statement of one of the marchers, Chengal Reddy, leader of the Indian Farmers Federation. "Traditional organic farming...," Reddy says, "led to mass starvation in India for centuries... Indian farmers need access to new technologies and especially to biotechnologies."Giddings also notes that the farmers expressed their contempt for the "empty arguments" of many of the Earth Summiteers by honoring them with a "Bullshit Award" made from two varnished piles of cow dung. The award was given, in particular, to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, for her role in "advancing policies that perpetuate poverty and hunger"A powerful rebuke, no doubt. But if anyone deserves the cow dung, it is the President of BIO, for almost every element of the spectacle he describes has been carefully contrived and orchestrated. Take, for instance, Chengal Reddy, the "farmer" that Giddings quotes.  Reddy is not a poor farmer, nor even the representative of poor farmers. Indeed, there is precious little to suggest he is even well-disposed towards the poor. The "Indian Farmers Federation" that he leads is a lobby of big commercial farmers in Andhra Pradesh. On occasion Reddy has admitted to knowing very little about farming, having never farmed in his life. He is, in reality, a politician and businessman whose family are a prominent right-wing political force in Andhra Pradesh˜his father having coined the saying, "There is only one thing Dalits (members of the untouchable caste) are good for, and that is being kicked".If it seems open to doubt that Reddy was in Johannesburg to help the poor speak for themselves, the identity of the march‚s organizers is also not a source of confidence.  Although the Times‚ headline said "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me", the media contact on the organizers' press release was "Kendra Okonski", the daughter of a US lumber industrialist who has worked for various right wing anti-regulatory NGOs - all funded and directed, needless to say, by "whites". These include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based "think tank" whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations, among them BIO member Dow Chemicals. Okonski also runs the website Counterprotest.net, where her specialty is helping right wing lobbyists take to the streets in mimicry of popular protesters.Given this, it hardly needs saying that Giddings' "Bullshit Award" was far from, as he suggests, the imaginative riposte of impoverished farmers to India's most celebrated environmentalist. It was, in fact, the creation of another right-wing pressure group˜the   Liberty Institute˜based in New Delhi and well known for its fervent support of deregulation, GM crops and Big Tobacco.The Liberty Institute is part of the same network that organized the rally: the deceptively-named "Sustainable Development Network." In London, the SDN shares offices, along with many of its key personnel˜including Okonski˜with the International Policy Network, a group whose Washington address just happens to be that of the CEI. The SDN is run by Julian Morris, its ubiquitous director, who also claims the title of Environment and Technology Programme Director for the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank that has advocated, amongst other interesting ideas, that African countries be sold off to multinational corporations in the interests of "good government".The involvement of the likes of Morris, Okonski and Reddy doesn't mean, of course, that no "real poor people," were involved in the Johannesburg march. There were indeed poor people there. James MacKinnon, who reported on the summit for the North American magazine Adbusters, witnessed the march first hand and told of seeing many impoverished street traders, who seemed genuinely aggrieved with the authorities for denying them their usual trading places in the streets around the summit. The flier distributed by the march organizers to recruit these people played on this grievance, and presented the march as a chance to demand, "Freedom to trade". The flier made no mention of "biotechnology" or "development", nor any other issue on the "eco-agenda of the Green Left".For all that, there were some real farmers present as well. Mackinnon says he spotted some wearing anti-environmentalist t-shirts, with slogans like "Stop Global Whining." This aroused his curiousity, since small-scale African farmers are not normally to be found among those jeering the "bogus science" of climate change.  Yet here they were, with slogans on placards and T-shirts: "Save the Planet from Sustainable Development", "Say No To Eco-Imperialism", "Greens: Stop Hurting the Poor" and "Biotechnology for Africa". On approaching the protesters, however, Mackinnon discovered that all of the props had been made available to the marchers by the organizers. When he tried to converse with some of the farmers about their pro-GM T-shirts, "They smiled shyly; none of them could speak or read English." 
  
Another irresistible question is how impoverished farmers - according to Giddings, there were farmers on the march from five different countries ˆ afforded the journey to  Johannesburg from lands as far away as the Philippines and India. Here, too, there is reason for suspicion. In late 1999 the New York Times reported that a street protest against genetic engineering outside an FDA public hearing in Washington DC was disrupted by a group of African-Americans carrying placards such as "Biotech saves children's lives" and "Biotech equals jobs." The Times learned that Monsanto's PR company, Burston-Marsteller, had paid a Baptist Church from a poor neighborhood to bus in these "demonstrators" as part of a wider campaign "to get groups of church members, union workers and the elderly to speak in favor of genetically engineered foods."The industry‚s fingerprints are all over Johannesburg as well. Chengal Reddy, the "farmer" that the President of BIO singled out as an example of farmers from the poorer world "speaking for themselves", has for at least a decade featured prominently in Monsanto's promotional work in India. Other groups represented on the march, including AfricaBio, have also been closely aligned with Monsanto's lobbying for its products. Reddy is known to have been brought to Johannesburg by AfricaBio.And here lies the real key to the President of BIO's account of the march, and specifically to the attack on Vandana Shiva. Monsanto and BIO want to project an image of GM crop acceptance with a Southern face. That's why Monsanto's Internet homepage used to be adorned with the faces of smiling Asian children. So when an Indian critic of the biotech industry gets featured, as Shiva was recently, on the cover of Time magazine as an environmental hero, the brand is under attack, and has to be protected.The counterattack takes place via a contrarian lens, one that projects the attackers' vices onto their target. Thus the problem becomes not Monsanto using questionable tactics to push its products onto a wary South, but malevolent agents of the rich world obstructing Monsanto's acceptance in a welcoming Third World. For this reason the press release for the "Bullshit Award" accuses Shiva, amongst other things, of being "a mouthpiece of western eco-imperialism". The media contact for this symbolic rejection of neocolonialism? The American, Kendra Okonski. The mouthpiece denouncing an Indian environmentalist as an agent of the West is a Western mouthpiece. 
  
The careful framing of the messages and the actors in the rally in Johannesburg provides but one particularly gaudy spectacle in a continuing fake parade. In particular, the Internet provides a perfect medium for such showcases, where the gap between the virtual and the real is easily erased.Take the South-facing website Foodsecurity.net, which promotes itself as "the web's most complete source of news and information about global food security concerns and sustainable agricultural practices". Foodsecurity.net claims to be "an independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world". Despite its global reach, however, Foodsecurity.net's only named staff member is its "African Director", Dr. Michael Mbwille, a Tanzanian doctor who's forever penning articles defending Monsanto and attacking the likes of Greenpeace.The news and information at Foodsecurity.net is largely pro-GM articles, often vituperative in content and boasting headlines like "The Villainous Vandana Shiva" or "Altered Crops Called Boon for Poor". When one penetrates beyond the news pages, the content is very limited. A single message graces the messageboard posted by an myoung@bivwood.com - the domain name of The Bivings Group, an internet PR company that numbers Monsanto among its clients. There's also an event posting from an Andura Smetacek, recently identified in an article in The Guardian as an e-mail front used by Monsanto to run a campaign of character assassination against its scientific and environmental critics.The site is registered to a Graydon Forrer, currently the managing director of Life Sciences Strategies, a company that specializes in "communications programmes" for the bio-science industries. A piece of information that is not usually disclosed in Graydon Forrer‚s self-presentation is that he was previously Monsanto‚s director of executive communications. Indeed, he seems to have been working for the company in 1999 - the same year the site of this "independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world" was first registered. Foodsecurity‚s "African Director", Dr. Mbwille, is not, incidentally, in Africa at the moment. He is enjoying a sabbatical observing medical practice in St. Louis, Missouri˜the home town, as it happens, of the Monsanto Corporation.Foodsecurity.net forms but one of a whole series of websites with undisclosed links to biotech industry lobbyists or PR companies, as our previous research has demonstrated. But despite the virtual circus oscillating about him, if the President of BIO were really interested in hearing poor "live, developing-world farmers... speaking for themselves", he need look no further than Chengal Reddy's home state of Andhra Pradesh. Here small-scale farmers and landless laborers were consulted as part of a meticulously conducted "citizens' jury" on World Bank-backed proposals to industrialize local agriculture and introduce GM crops. Having heard all sides of the argument, including as it happens the views of Chengal Reddy, the jury unanimously rejected these proposals, which are likely to force more than 100,000 people off the land. Similar citizens' juries on GM crops in Brazil and in the Indian state of Karnataka have come to similar conclusions - something that the President of BIO is almost certainly aware of.But rainchecks on the real views of the poor count for little in a world where "something new, something very big" and "a turning point" in the global march towards our corporate future, turns out to be Monsanto's soapbox behind a black man's face.... 
Since 1998 Jonathan Matthews has been researching and writing on the industrial alignment of the bio-sciences, and the public relations activities of the biotech industry and its supporters. He co-founded the campaigning news and research service Norfolk Genetic Information Network, also known as GM Watch.For further information about citizens‚ juries on GM food and farming in the Global South see: 
the report on Food and Farming Futures for Andhra Pradesh, 
http://www.iied.org/pdf/Prajateerpu.pdf, 
the press article, "The Locals Know What Aid They Need", 
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=276687, 
and the website of the development charity, ActionAid, 
http://www.actionaid.org/ourpriorities/foodrights/gmtechnology/gmtechnology.shtmlFor more information about Monsanto's cyberwar against its critics: 
http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html Kendra Okonski, "Is Water a Human Right?," The New Atlantis, Number 24, Spring 2009, pp. 61-73.
Kendra OkonskiHundreds of millions of people around the world lack regular access to clean water and sewerage. In many parts of the globe, obtaining water for everyday use requires an enormous diversion of time and effort. And beyond thirst and reduced productivity, the lack of clean water has very serious health consequences: Dirty water can transmit parasites, bacteria, and viruses and can inhibit sanitation, resulting in millions of cases of water-borne diseases each year, many deadly. The “global crisis in water,” as a 2006 United Nations report put it, “claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.” In short, the unavailability of clean water easily ranks among the most serious problems facing humanity.Over the past decade, clean-water scarcity has been the subject of hundreds of academic studies, improving our understanding of its causes and its scope and identifying many possible solutions. At the same time, however, the problem has also been the focus of a burgeoning activist movement that tends to be less reflective and less constructive. These activists deem access to water a human right — one that is under constant assault by corporate malefactors.Two recent documentaries, Thirst and Flow, make the case for the water-rights movement. They are cinematically beautiful, showing vividly colorful locales; stunning footage of water dripping, trickling, splashing, and crashing about; and dozens of scholars and activists who can be admired for their energy and passionate commitment to ameliorating very real health and environmental problems. Both documentaries offer an illuminating window into the central assumptions held by this growing movement: Because water is a natural resource necessary for human survival, access to clean water is a human right. Water belongs to all; it is not a commodity that can be legitimately privately owned. Water should be provided by governments; it is immoral to profit from its sale.These propositions raise important questions. If access to water is a human right, does every human have a right to consume as much water as he wishes, regardless of time and place? If not, to what quantity of water does each individual have a right? Does it vary by circumstance? Whose responsibility is it to provide that water to users? At whose expense? How are disputes between different users of water to be settled? How do we encourage more efficient use of water?Unfortunately, neither Thirst nor Flow adequately addresses these practical questions arising from their core convictions. Instead, both documentaries tell us that water is part of an inviolate “global commons” that must not be owned, traded in markets, or otherwise sullied by private enterprise. Once the right-to-water premise is established, it’s not difficult to sort the Davids from the Goliaths. From Bolivia to India to small-town America, the documentaries show us how oppressed communities are rising up against profiteering multinational companies and their cronies in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are colluding to trample on the people’s right to water.Notable by its absence in Thirst and Flow is any discussion of the mounting academic research showing that it is precisely because water is un-owned, un-traded, and hence under-priced, that water delivery systems, aquifers, and watersheds are in serious peril. [//Heaertland conf in TCA doc: god bless coal, the most moral fuel; the way to get more trees is cut them down b/c creates a price signal]For the same reason, there is a substantial underinvestment in the development and deployment of new technologies for water management. And although they argue that water should be provided by the public sector, neither Thirst nor Flow remarks on the fact that the governments of poor countries have failed abjectly to provide water to hundreds of millions of thirsty people. Likewise, we never hear how overbearing government bureaucracy and regulation perpetuates water scarcity and prevents private-sector solutions to water and sewerage issues.Water use is not a simple science. Both the amount of water and its particular uses vary significantly geographically and among consumers. It typically does not exist in nature in a form suitable for human consumption, so resources are required to test and treat it. It is heavy and difficult to control, requiring infrastructure for storage and transportation — pipes, reservoirs, testing equipment, and maintenance. Put simply, usable water, at least on a massive scale, is neither free nor natural.The producers of Thirst and Flow do not deny that making water usable requires these value-added services. But to them, since water resources are part of a “global commons,” only government can be their legitimate manager. However, a growing body of empirical research shows the shortcomings of government management. With expanding human populations around the world, all of whom want access to clean water and sewerage, there is an urgent need to identify and implement practical solutions to the problems of managing and delivering water — a task so vast and complex that only the private sector is likely to succeed in it.
The activists’ alternative, which would bar the owning and trading of water, would result in the further spread of the sort of inept and corrupt water management seen in many poor countries today. These countries often have government-owned pipes, but they are leaky, water is stolen or “unaccounted for,” and sewerage is non-existent. Many of these countries’ governments are semi-socialistic, so they view extra people as a burden; these governments often excuse their failure to extend state-owned services such as water, telephones, and electricity into peripheral urban areas with bureaucratic sleight-of-hand: denying the legal existence of people who live in these areas (e.g., “slum dwellers”) and refusing to recognize them as formal citizens.
Where governments fail in this way, informal entrepreneurs — not the multinational, shareholder-owned water companies attacked in Thirst and Flow — very often step into the breach. For them, every additional person represents a new opportunity to do business. They are the ones filling the water gap in the slums of the world’s poorest cities, from Nairobi to New Delhi, from Abuja to Asunción. Some deliver water on human- or donkey-powered carts, some in diesel trucks, and some even via full-scale tankers. In African cities, street vendors sell water to passersby in transparent plastic bags called “water sachets.” Some entrepreneurs, such as those on the outskirts of Delhi, operate small-scale pipe systems. Informal entrepreneurs also undertake truly unenviable tasks, such as digging out latrines with shovels and hauling the sewage away. In Indonesia, entrepreneurs have set up private sewerage systems. In many countries, including India and Kenya, entrepreneurs and nongovernmental organizations run privately-operated toilet facilities.
The transactions between these informal entrepreneurs and consumers are generally completely voluntary: entrepreneurs supply water and sewerage, and consumers willingly pay for it, because it is more reliable, and often less costly, than similar services provided by government. These private services make it possible for their customers to pursue other uses of their own time and resources, and to live better lives.
These entrepreneurs and their customers are some of the world’s poorest people. Nevertheless, they have created a thriving market to address water problems that their governments have failed to solve. The great extent of such water services throughout cities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia is testament to their success — and just as importantly, to the failure of government provision.
The demand, repeated throughout Thirst and Flow, that profit from the sale of water be abolished, would have the immediate effect of eliminating these private providers. Given that these markets were formed precisely because of government incompetence and corruption, it seems highly unlikely that governments would replace these markets with a better system. In fact, many governments have already declared the operations of the water entrepreneurs illegal. That’s why they operate in the informal sector — the black market for clean water. Abolishing water-selling profit may benefit these countries’ governments, but for citizens it could mean an immediate reduction of access to water and sewerage.
That’s not to say that the informal markets are free of problems. Because many of these markets are illegal, both the entrepreneurs and consumers face substantial risks. Informal businesses are by definition unable to establish legally enforceable contractual relations or to build their own brands. They are unable to own property and thus cannot avail themselves of bank loans and other mechanisms to grow their businesses. They live in fear of the police and often are forced to bribe local officials in order to continue their activities.
How does one reform an underground market that provides a good that not only is free of stigma (unlike, for instance, the drug trade) but also is a human necessity? An obvious solution in urban areas, particularly in slums, would be to formally recognize these small-scale entrepreneurs, thus enabling them to own their businesses and carry out their transactions legally. This would empower the entrepreneurs to take advantage of their local knowledge and to acquire the means to “scale up” their services.
In a licit, competitive market, entrepreneurs would have stronger incentives to innovate, which would in turn drive down unit costs, improve service, expand the adoption of technologies, and benefit many more customers. Formalization would also neutralize the common criticism made of many water vendors that they sell “poor quality” water. Without access to capital, which would require formality, these water vendors have little ability to improve the quality of their water. But if they were able to formalize their operations, they would likely invest in purification and monitoring technologies.
The very existence of these informal water entrepreneurs thoroughly undermines the claim that governments can be relied on to solve the water crisis and that markets cannot. The water entrepreneurs and their customers are employing the human creative drive to solve problems, to use resources more efficiently, and to improve local environmental and health conditions. For these people — among the poorest in the world — government is the problem, not the solution.
Whether the value-added services involved in making water usable — transportation, storage, treatment — come from the public or the private sector, someone has to pay for them. While both Thirst and Flow essentially ignore the informal private water entrepreneurs, they aggressively attack formal private companies supplying water to both the rich and the poor.
The book version of Thirst claims that “private systems usually charge more than public systems right next door.” This is a false comparison of the highest order. If the government sets the price of water below the market level, the public system’s true costs can only be gauged by factoring in taxpayer contributions. As even Thirst concedes, the cost of replacing the crumbling municipal water infrastructure in the United States will run into many billions over the coming years. Many local government officials then face a quandary: Having under-priced water for decades, they have effectively deferred costs into the future. They must raise taxes, raise water rates, or consider other arrangements, such as the private provision of water or the private maintenance of the water infrastructure. This seems particularly objectionable in water-scarce areas, because these deferred costs greatly imperil the future availability of water.
One case covered extensively in Thirst is that of Stockton, California. The city attempted to cut back on public expenditure by bringing in a private company to manage and upgrade Stockton’s water infrastructure, a plan that would, according to the mayor, save taxpayers about $175 million over twenty years. The city council agreed to a twenty-year contract with OMI-Thames Water that went into effect in August 2003. However, a consortium of residents and the local trade unions objected to the deal — they worried about public employee layoffs, reduced water quality, and price hikes — and were subsequently joined by environmental groups in a lawsuit. By 2007, the outcry forced the city to terminate the contract with the company prematurely.But of course leaving water systems under government control does not make those services free. It only masks the costs by dispersing them among taxpayers, by deferring them until the future through municipal bonds, or by simply ignoring them and allowing infrastructure to decay until it reaches a critical point — by which time the government officials currently in office will be long gone. By undercharging for water, municipal systems often fail to generate the revenue needed to update their infrastructure to cope with increasing demand, and they fail to invest in the protection of aquifers and watersheds. Artificially low water prices can also encourage waste and discourage conservation by individual water users. Economically speaking, the costs of present consumption are being passed on to future users.
While water-system efficiency is not government’s strong suit, it is actually an explicit goal of private operators. Privately-operated water systems reflect costs more accurately, while growing revenue that can be reinvested in infrastructure. Companies do this by negotiating long-term contracts, which ensures that costs associated with replacing infrastructure can be recouped over time.
Opponents object on the grounds that higher-priced water is not feasible for the poor, and that water should be subsidized by taxpayers so that it remains “low-cost” for all. But if equity is a concern, practical steps can be taken to enact minimal mandates that would ensure everyone has access to water, while keeping the water supply managed by the private sphere. When it privatized the provision of water in 1988–89, Chile enacted an individual water subsidy system that guaranteed poorer households a certain amount of water. A study by Mark W. Rosegrant (a policy analyst) and Renato Gazmuri Schleyer (the former Chilean agriculture secretary) showed that, as a result of the combination of privatization and targeted support, household access to water between 1970 and 1994 in Chile increased from 27 percent to 94 percent in rural areas, and from 63 percent to 99 percent in urban areas.[pinochet 1973-1993]Some activists claim that water and sewerage are a “natural monopoly” — that they are functions that only a single entity can supply, and therefore that entity should be governmental, with the public’s best interests in mind, instead of a private corporation that won’t face competitive pressures. This is demonstrably not the case in poor countries, and probably not anywhere. Moreover, as British economist Colin Robinson has noted, municipal authorities can create the opportunity for competition along the supply chain of water provision: in infrastructure, testing, delivery, metering, collection, and wastewater treatment. Consumers can benefit from the competitive market process without the drawbacks that potentially arise from a sole provider.
If water remains an unmanaged or poorly-managed common good, as demand for water grows through increased population and economic development, pressure on water resources will grow, too. But that need not be the case. Water can be managed and supplied more efficiently, and new technologies are foreseeable for treating, filtering, and monitoring water, as well as for distributing and handling wastewater. For example, “graywater” — water left over from household processes like bathing and laundry — might be more efficiently cycled back into the system; the technologies that could make that happen are fairly easy to envision. But these innovations will likely not be pursued, let alone be made affordable, unless the supply of water is subject to market competition.
Both Thirst and Flow call attention to some of the environmental problems connected to water resources in different locations around the world. Both documentaries treat these subjects superficially and with an alarmist tone, ignoring or dismissing on ideological grounds policies that would lead to better management and more sustainable use of water.
Thirst explicitly rejects the proposition that privately-managed water supply is efficient and promotes conservation. The book tied to the movie claims that “profit-making enterprises want you to use more water, not less, in order to maximize profit for their shareholders.” In a policy vacuum, that statement might seem sensible: it is true, after all, that companies generally seek to maximize their profits, and selling more of something will bring in more revenue. But we are not in a policy vacuum; we are in a system in which the supply of water is dominated by government-run or government-subsidized entities that charge below-market prices. Water users — whether households, farms, or industries — tend to use it less efficiently than they would if they paid its true cost. If we switched to a system in which water and sewerage were supplied by companies charging competitive market prices, users would likely reduce their consumption. The dynamic pricing of water also encourages the adoption of conservation technologies, like household meters, which allow people to better understand the relationship of their water usage to the wider question of water scarcity.
Admittedly, if many people in a given area are currently underserved, the introduction of a competitive private supply may well lead to an increase in their consumption of water. This is no bad thing; it presumably represents an improvement in their standard of living. And while demand may well rise, it will be met with a sustainable supply, since well-run companies will include in the prices they charge the cost of investing in the purchase of water rights, as well as storage, purification, pumps, and pipes. The same cannot always be said of government-run water systems.
In a similar vein, Thirst also claims that “private companies have little incentive to conserve water because payments and profits increase with rising water consumption.” Actually, private water suppliers lose money when they lose water — whether through leaky pipes or other means — so it certainly is in their interest to conserve water. And if water were treated more as a marketable commodity, companies would have a stronger incentive to maintain the ultimate source of water (that is, aquifers and watersheds). Likewise, if private companies that use water pay a market price for it, they will have a clear incentive to use that water more efficiently.
Thirst and Flow take an unrealistically short-term view of economic processes, relying on the assumption that companies exist purely to generate a profit as quickly as possible. But private suppliers treat water as an economic resource, which means they will be unlikely to exploit the resource simply to produce short-term gains at the expense of long-term sustainability. In contrast, when ownership is not protected by private property rights, each user typically has incentives to consume as much as possible as soon as possible, because what he doesn’t consume will be consumed by others. This is the “tragedy of the commons” first described in Garrett Hardin’s famous 1968 Science article; it has led to some of the world’s worst environmental disasters, like the near-extinction of the bison in North America.
When government controls resources, the result can be just as devastating. Soviet bureaucrats, starting in the 1940s, decided to divert waters from the three rivers that fed the Aral Sea in order to irrigate cotton plantations in central Asia. Catastrophic environmental problems ensued, including destructive shifts in the local microclimate and the complete devastation of the fishing industry through water loss and salinization. The Aral now covers just a quarter of the area it did in 1960.
Admittedly, the effects of government control of water are generally far more subtle than the Aral disaster. For example, water prices set artificially low by governments can distort agriculture by making it easier for farmers to grow water-intensive crops, like cotton and alfalfa, in places without plenty of water. If farmers are made to pay the full cost of water, they may be more likely to shift away from water-intensive crops to crops suitable for their region. In Chile, South Africa, and India, market-priced water has encouraged farmers to switch to crops (such as orchard fruits, grapes, and avocados) that have generated more revenue, thus leaving the farmers better off while using water resources far more sustainably.
A parallel example exists with the world’s fisheries, which have largely been managed by governments. Many have collapsed or are facing collapse due to extreme over-fishing. But a study published in Science in September 2008 demonstrates that when fisheries are managed with quasi-property rights and market processes, the fisheries are far healthier and more sustainable than their government-managed counterparts. In these cases, it is no longer “a race to the bottom”; the fishermen view the fish as a valuable resource to be sustained for the long term, rather than to be exploited in their entirety as quickly as possible.
Resource problems often arise when rights to a resource are not clearly specified, transferable, and legally enforceable. If governments relinquished their control, stopped subsidizing users, and instead enabled property rights, markets, and prices to flourish, the world’s “water crisis” would be a far less serious concern.
Among the case studies highlighted in the documentaries is one involving activists opposed to the operation of the Coca-Cola Company in Plachimada, Kerala, India. Flow shows us prominent environmental activists protesting in front of a Coca-Cola bottling plant, a vigil by village women who object to the plant, and various locals who allege that the groundwater in the area disappeared or became poisonous as a result of the operations of the bottling plant. The documentary’s aim to paint Coca-Cola as the source of exploitation and malfeasance is transparent.
The facts paint a more complicated picture. Coca-Cola was invited by the Kerala state government to open a bottling plant, which was constructed in 2000. After a few years of operation, local antagonists blamed the plant’s operations for falling water supplies and diminishing water quality, and so local officials refused to renew the plant’s license, effectively shutting it down. However, a court-commissioned study indicated that Coca-Cola’s operations coincided with a period of low monsoonal rainfall, and that the company was not the primary cause of lower groundwater levels. Nevertheless, the plant has remained shut since March 2004 and the case is now pending before India’s Supreme Court. (In a supposedly unrelated matter, the Marxist government of Kerala banned the manufacture and sale of Coca-Cola in the state in August 2006; the ban was overturned by the state’s high court a month later.)
This dispute illustrates the need for clear rules pertaining to water extraction and the property rights of local people. Without such clear rules, there is a danger that governments will simply sell the extraction rights to companies, thereby abrogating the legitimate historic claims of local users. If local people are disenfranchised, and government officials are perceived to be acting against the best interest of the electorate, conflict is inevitable. But Thirst and Flow do not explore such critical underlying problems, preferring instead simply to note that some locals objected to the presence of a multinational company and to conclude that government therefore should own and manage water.
But the case of another Indian city makes clear that government ownership is plainly not the best solution. Tirupur, a city in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, is not featured in Flow or Thirst — perhaps because it demonstrates how India’s recent economic development has created the opportunity for Indian businesses to use water more efficiently, through completely voluntary trading.
Tirupur produces at least half of India’s cotton knitwear exports. The city has hundreds of textile firms that employ hundreds of thousands of people. Each kilogram of cloth processed in Tiripur requires approximately 150 liters of water, chiefly for dyeing and bleaching. A vibrant trade in water with local farmers has ensued — because the water is more valuable when used to produce textiles than to produce agricultural goods. Environmental economist Prakash Nelliyat notes, “Water-intensive industries are very willing to pay for water as water is an important, high-value addition and input.”
Thirst and Flow also take issue with bottled water, mocking its drinkers as dupes who would be better off drinking tap water. And the films particularly criticize water bottled by foreign multinationals. Nestlé, a large Swiss company which bottles water in locations from India to Indiana, gets a drubbing. Thirst (the book) says, “Nestlé isn’t making anything. It is merely exploiting a substance in the public domain, pasting on its brand name, shipping it out, and marking it up for sale by a factor of a hundred or more.”
One of Nestlé’s bottling plants is located at a spring in Mecosta County, Michigan. Both documentaries show us the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, a coalition organized to oppose the operation of this plant. Its members alleged that the plant has resulted in environmental problems (such as dry wells and mud flats) and that Nestlé has received government tax breaks. This case — like that of Coca-Cola in Kerala — is complicated, but again, Thirst and Flow appear to have little patience for anything that might get in the way of a good story.
In its defense, Nestlé points out that it pays more than $2 million in taxes in Mecosta County each year. Further, according to local geographical experts, the mud flats are a naturally occurring feature of the local geography. Nestlé, for its part, claims that “no reports of well issues have been made,” that monitoring of local water resources has shown no significant change in water levels, and that this monitoring record shows clearly that “water resources and ecosystems have not been negatively impacted.”
But in some ways, all this is beside the point. People value the convenience of bottled water, so they pay more for it. It enables them to carry water on public transportation or in other locations where potable water is scarce or non-existent. And people also seem to value the quality of bottled water. Perhaps they don’t like the overly chlorinated water produced by some municipal water systems and they appreciate water being filtered. Tea brews better in softer water, and often doesn’t brew in water with a relatively high mineral content (as is frequently true of well water). In some areas, the use of groundwater results in limescale deposits, which can, over time, harm electrical elements in coffee machines, electric kettles, and other devices; the use of bottled water can help prevent these and other problems. Beyond that, consumers clearly trust the brands of bottled water — much as the opponents of bottled water would like us to believe otherwise — and that trust exists with good cause. In contrast, numerous studies have shown that some city water systems provide low-quality water, often because of the proximity of water pipes to sewer pipes. Municipalities with compromised water supplies occasionally make the news — Fresno, California; Phoenix, Arizona; and Washington, D.C. are among the major U.S. cities with public water problems in the last decade.
The choice between bottled and tap water should be a matter of personal preference, but activists have inflated the debate far out of proportion, connecting it to larger complaints about markets and “corporate globalization.” Presumably caving to pressure from activist campaigns, some U.S. cities have begun taxing the sale of bottled water and banning its purchase with city funds.
At the heart of the debate is our attitude toward individual choices. Bottled water is a good and a service; it enables individuals to experience a better quality of life. This, rather than the parody of markets depicted in Thirst and Flow, is what defines a dynamic market process. Individual consumers make choices about which goods and services to purchase. Businesses take risks to produce and supply those goods and services. A set of fundamental institutions — including property rights, contracts, the ability to engage in trade, regulation, and taxation — facilitate that process.
To be sure, in calling attention to the process by which bottled water is manufactured, Thirst and Flow do raise some important issues. For instance, it is truly objectionable when governments create exclusive deals for large businesses rather than trying to create a level playing field for businesses of all sizes to compete. And perhaps Mecosta County’s agreement with Nestlé could have been arranged so as to yield more community power over decision-making — a prospect that would have been likelier if the rights to that water were clearly defined, transferable, and enforceable. (For instance, each resident might be granted a share in the county’s water, entitling him to a vote on how the county’s water resources can be used.)
The authors of the book Thirst compare the water crisis to “the Boston Tea Party, the movement for the abolition of slavery, [and] the Vietnam War protests.” While they are right to point out the importance of water policy, the makers of Thirst and Flow have misdiagnosed the problems, and their proposed solutions would only exacerbate them.
Many of these films’ protagonists are members of a well-coordinated group of activists opposed to capitalism and globalism; water is but one of their pretexts for inveighing against the growth and integration of national economies. Their attacks are broad and radical. International trade and market institutions, such as property rights, are their common targets. Thirst, for example, speaks favorably about the forced taking of private property through eminent domain, evincing a general disdain for anything “private.”
These anti-capitalist activists have a penchant for attacking multinational businesses, since these are very visible and susceptible to attacks on their reputation. The activists identify issues involving a high-profile target, such as Nestlé or Coca-Cola, and make these issues out to be a “crisis” of one form or another, repeating mistruths and creating alliances with local nongovernmental organizations that may or may not have a legitimate grievance with the company in question.
Several of the people featured in both of the films make their living as full-time activists, including Maude Barlow, a Canadian, and Vandana Shiva, an Indian; they and their union friends jet around the globe armed with placards, giant puppets, costumes, and expensive video equipment to document themselves. They protest at global water meetings in Japan, Mexico, and Turkey, and somehow are always on hand when TV cameras draw near.
Ultimately, it is not these activists’ methods or love of street theater that is the problem. Nor is it even their lack of pragmatism or their factual omissions. The chief problem is that these activists’ ideas can genuinely harm the very people they mean to help. They find disenfranchised local people — people who truly suffer from government-induced water scarcity, for example — and exploit them for ideological ends. [like joburg?]Well meaning though they may be, these water activists misunderstand or misstate the institutional deficiencies that contribute not just to water scarcity, but poverty in general.
Attacking corporations and lamenting globalization will not alleviate the water crisis. Nor will pretending that water is a human right. We require another paradigm of right — the right to property, and the institutions and practices that enforce that right — to put self-interested individual creativity in the service of managing, delivering, and preserving our world’s precious water.
Kendra Okonski is editor of The Water Revolution (International Policy Press, London, 2006) and co-editor of Keeping the Water Flowing (Academic Foundation, India, 2007). She is communications director of the International Policy Network, a think tank based in London.
Kendra Okonski, "Is Water a Human Right?," The New Atlantis, Number 24, Spring 2009, pp. 61-73.srcwtch:Kendra Okonski wears various hats including from the London-based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Think_tank" title="Think tank" class="mw-redirect">think tank</a>, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/International_Policy_Network" title="International Policy Network">International Policy Network</a> (IPN).

<h2>History</h2>

She currently appears also as the Coordinator of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sustainable_Development_Network" title="Sustainable Development Network">Sustainable Development Network</a>.

Prior to 2001 Okonski worked as a research assistant at the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute" title="Competitive Enterprise Institute">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a>, the Washington based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Think_tank" title="Think tank" class="mw-redirect">think tank</a> whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations like <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Philip_Morris" title="Philip Morris" class="mw-redirect">Philip Morris</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Dow_Chemical" title="Dow Chemical" class="mw-redirect">Dow Chemical</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ExxonMobil" title="ExxonMobil" class="mw-redirect">ExxonMobil</a>.

Daughter of a US lumber industrialist, Okonski grew up in Montana, U.S.A., and Santiago, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Chile" title="Chile">Chile</a>. She studied economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan, where she also edited, The Restoration, a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Libertarian" title="Libertarian" class="mw-redirect">libertarian</a> publication for college students.

<h2>Okonski on climate change</h2>

Kendra Okonsiki said: -"<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kyoto_Protocol" title="Kyoto Protocol">Kyoto</a> will do nothing to halt <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_warming" title="Global warming">global warming</a>."

This is true.

"It might delay it for a few years, but more stringent emissions cuts would."

This is true.

"But those things, that would actually harm us more than global warming would."

This is an unfounded inquantified assertion. There is no argument brought to bear to support it.

" . . . because it would constrain our ability to grow and to develop new technologies and to help poor countries do the same thing," she told ABC radio. <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2003/s1002595.htm">[1]</a>

"Attempting to mitigate our emissions of carbon dioxide, with the intention of changing the Earth's climate, is the wrong way to go about it. Whether or not humans are causing global warming, whether or not it's going to be negative, we ought to consider other strategies."

Why doesn't this read, "in addition to controlling emissions" . . . "we ought etc . . . ".

"If it's going to be negative, then we should address those problems, so you know, if disease is going to be a problem, we should address disease, not try to change the temperature to change the spread of disease. To me, it seems like rather ambitious and probably not possible," she said.

"If countries want to go on with the policies that they built around Kyoto, that's fine."

That is a better formulation and corrects the earlier assertion against action on emissions mitigation . . .

"but if they want something that globally is going to work, then we need to think about other measures that we can take and that I believe those things should include adaptations."

That too is a better formulation and corrects the earlier assertion against action on emissions mitigation . . .

"Adaptation would increase our resilience and reduce our vulnerability to any changes that come along, that kind of strategy would be beneficial regardless of whatever climate changes happen, and we wouldn't be sort of spending a lot of money now, as Kyoto would make us do, to have negligible benefits in the future," she said.

Okonski has spoken in the past to university student groups, and has links with the libertarian London School of Economics <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hayek_Society" title="Hayek Society">Hayek Society</a>.

Okonski published an article on the Economist-owned publication European Voice on 13 February 2004, as book author but without disclosing her IPN affiliation. In it she wrote that the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/European_Union" title="European Union">European Union</a> should focus less on climate change and that climate change may become "a delight for birdwatchers and gardeners".

Bangladesh is already partly drowing from sea-level rise and this is not "a delight for birdwatchers and gardeners".

In March 2006 she spoke as Director of Environmental Programs for IPN at an Amercian Enterprise Institute Symposium on "Water Scarcity" promoting privatization, free markets, and deregulation of water systems. <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1275,filter.all/event_detail.asp">[2]</a>

<h2>External links</h2>

<ul>

<li>Alison Caldwell, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2003/s1002595.htm">Russia puts Kyoto treaty in doubt</a>" 'The World Today - ABC Radio National', December 3 , 2003.[stossel?]</li>

</ul>

</div>

<div id="mw-normal-catlinks" class="mw-normal-catlinks"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories">Categories</a>:

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Nuclear_PR" title="Category:Nuclear PR">Nuclear PR</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Category:Think_tanks/personnel" title="Category:Think tanks/personnel">Think tanks/personnel</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<h2>IPN Origins</h2>

In 2001 the name was changed to the IPN and it expanded its operations with significant corporate funding. Its international Directors then were <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Roger_Bate" title="Roger Bate">Roger Bate</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Julian_Morris" title="Julian Morris">Julian Morris</a>, two people who have spear-headed the pro-corporate, anti-environmental debate for over a decade in the UK, whilst supporting controversial industries. Bate co-founded the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/European_Science_and_Environment_Forum" title="European Science and Environment Forum">European Science and Environment Forum</a> in 1994, which arose from the concept for a pro-biotech / tobacco, chemical industry <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Front_group" title="Front group" class="mw-redirect">front group</a> in Europe funded by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Philip_Morris" title="Philip Morris" class="mw-redirect">Philip Morris</a>. He also solicited money of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tobacco_industry" title="Tobacco industry">tobacco industry</a> for a book on risk and smoking, and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Julian_Morris" title="Julian Morris">Julian Morris</a> was a witness for the GM O industry <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Life_Sciences_Network&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Life Sciences Network (page does not exist)">Life Sciences Network</a> at the GM Commission in New Zealand. Some unknown industry / industries are now funding ESEF / IPN to counter the environmental movement on a global scale.

Crypto:

It also funds and has set up the websites of certain "partner "organisations which have all the appearances of being African or Asian NGOs, but seem little more than satellite front organisations whose true identity is also hidden. In 2004 it received funding from <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Exxon" title="Exxon" class="mw-redirect">Exxon</a> to work on climate and a book was published by the IPN edited by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kendra_Okonski" title="Kendra Okonski">Kendra Okonski</a>. Okonski and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Julian_Morris" title="Julian Morris">Julian Morris</a> still deny climate change and the need for any action. Writing last month Morris wrote "There are no solid grounds for assuming, as Messrs Blair and Howard do, that global warming demands immediate and far-reaching action".

Okonski is a long-time libertarian activist and daughter of a US lumber industrialist. Okonski has a history of counter-protests against progressive and environmental organisations. She organised the pro-farmers counter-protests at the WSSD[joberg?]. She also co-founded and managed the website <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Counterprotest.net&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Counterprotest.net (page does not exist)">counterprotest.net</a> and organised the Washington-area 'Walk for Capitalism' in 2001. Okonski still remains the contact for the "<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sustainable_Development_Network" title="Sustainable Development Network">Sustainable Development Network</a>", another guise of the IPN. Okonski also has set up a number of websites of IPN's affiliates organisations that raises questions about their true independence. What you have here is a first world corporate front organisation setting up websites for so-called third world organisations, who then attack western environmentalists for being Imperialists. These include

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_of_Public_Policy_Analysis&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Institute of Public Policy Analysis (page does not exist)">Institute of Public Policy Analysis</a> - Nigeria</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Inter_Region_Economic_Network&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Inter Region Economic Network (page does not exist)">Inter Region Economic Network</a> (IREN) Kenya</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Liberty_Institute" title="Liberty Institute">Liberty Institute</a> - India REDDY</li>

<li>The <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Alternate_Solutions_Institute" title="Alternate Solutions Institute">Alternate Solutions Institute</a>, Pakistan.</li>

</ul>

<h2>Issues</h2>

The IPN lists its areas of interest as:

<ul>

<li>Sustainable Development & the Environment</li>

<li>Health</li>

<li>Free Trade and Globalisation</li>

<li>Technology</li>

<li>Economics</li>

</ul>

The IPN is currently running a technology campaign, apparently to promote the use of software patents in Europe. <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.ipntechnology.org/ip.php">[8]</a>

It has also become involved in international pharmaceutical issues, seeking to defend the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pharmaceutical_industry" title="Pharmaceutical industry">pharmaceutical industry</a> from claims that it ignores the diseases of the developing world in favour of the more profitable lifestyle diseases of wealthy countries. Most of this work is conducted by its front group the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Campaign_for_Fighting_Diseases" title="Campaign for Fighting Diseases">Campaign for Fighting Diseases</a>.

</div>

<a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski">http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski</a>

Kendra Okonski works for the <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/International_Policy_Network" title="International Policy Network" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; background: none;">International Policy Network</a> (IPN) in London. Prior to 2001 Okonski worked as a research assistant at the <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute" title="Competitive Enterprise Institute" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; background: none;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a>, the Washington-based 'think tank' whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations like <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Philip_Morris" class="extiw" title="sourcewatch:Philip Morris" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Philip Morris</a> and Dow Chemicals.

<h2 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; width: auto; display: inline; background: none;">Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#" class="internal" id="togglelink" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">hide</a>] </div>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#Education_and_Career" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1 Education and Career</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#Activities" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2 Activities</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#Affiliations.2C_Publications.2C_Resources.2C_Notes" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3 Affiliations, Publications, Resources, Notes</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#Affiliations" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.1 Affiliations</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#Publications" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.2 Publications</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#Resources" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.3 Resources</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#Notes" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3.4 Notes</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background: none;">Education and Career</h2>

Daughter of a US lumber industrialist, Okonski grew up in Montana, U.S.A., and Santiago, Chile. She studied economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan, where she also edited The Restoration, a libertarian publication for college students.

Okonski has edited a <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://adaptordie.info/about_the_editor_and_contributors.php" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">book</a> for the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=155" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">IPN</a> attacking the Kyoto protocol. The book's contributors include several who have been active in the GM debate - <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Martin_Livermore" title="Martin Livermore" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Martin Livermore</a>, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Julian_Morris" title="Julian Morris" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Julian Morris</a>, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Barun_Mitra" title="Barun Mitra" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Barun Mitra</a> and <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Philip_Stott" title="Philip Stott" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Philip Stott</a>.

Okonski is described as the IPN's 'Sustainable Development Project Director.' As part of her job, she writes on trade and globalization, agriculture, and environmental issues. She has also fronted as the media contact for the deceptively named <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Sustainable_Development_Network" title="Sustainable Development Network" style="text-decoration: none; background: none rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sustainable Development </a><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Sustainable_Development_Network" title="Sustainable Development Network" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Network</a> (SDN). SDN appears to be another guise of the IPN and its director <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Julian_Morris" title="Julian Morris" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Julian Morris</a>.

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background: none;">Activities</h2>

During the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002, SDN played a key coordinating role for pro-corporate lobbying, including organising a pro-GM march. According to <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/L._Val_Giddings" title="L. Val Giddings" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">L. Val Giddings</a>, the <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Biotechnology_Industry_Organization" title="Biotechnology Industry Organization" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Biotechnology Industry Organization</a>'s Vice President of Food and Agriculture, the march was the very first time, 'real, live, developing-world farmers' were given a chance to speak for themselves and reject the 'empty arguments' of the biotech industry's critics. Giddings also claimed that the farmers conferred a 'Bullshit Award', made with two varnished piles of cow dung, upon those that were deepening their poverty by denying them biotechnology. Among the marchers were <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/TJ_Buthelezi" title="TJ Buthelezi" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">TJ Buthelezi</a>, <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Chengal_Reddy" title="Chengal Reddy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Chengal Reddy</a>, and representatives of <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/AfricaBio" title="AfricaBio" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">AfricaBio</a>.

But an eyewitness report on the march suggests Giddings' account is highly misleading <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#cite_note-0" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">[1]</a> Many of the marchers were not there to support GM. In fact, the main body of marchers had been recruited in the name of a protest against <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://sdnetwork.net/informals/march.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">limitations placed on street trading</a> by the Johannesburg authorities.

A week before a march had taken place in Johannesburg involving thousands of poor, evicted and landless people, but it drew almost no media coverage. By contrast the 'pro-GM' march, despite involving only a few hundred people, captured <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/Fake-Parade-Matthews3dec02.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">press coverage</a> on five continents. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-2matthews.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">Subsequent comment</a> has focused on the fact that the organizers' <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://sdnetwork.net/media/farmers_march.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">press release</a> gave Kendra Okonski as the media contact. Okonski was also the media contact on the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.libertyindia.org/events/bullshit_award_28august2002.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">press release</a> for the 'Bullshit Award', which was not conferred by farmers, as Giddings claimed, but by a right-wing pressure group - the New-Delhi based <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Liberty_Institute" title="Liberty Institute" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Liberty Institute</a>, a part of the <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Sustainable_Development_Network" title="Sustainable Development Network" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Sustainable Development Network</a>.

Okonski has a long track record of organising 'protest'. She co-founded and managed the website <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php?title=Counterprotest.net&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Counterprotest.net (page does not exist)" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; background: none;">counterprotest.net</a>. In an article entitled, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://bureaucrash.com/blogs/dispatches/000525.shtml" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">Take it to the streets</a>, Okonski argues for 'a new approach to marketing libertarian ideas'. Of particular importance, she says, is 'the need to imitate the tactics of our opponents (environmentalists, human and civil rights groups, anti-globalization groups), both in the short run and the long run'. According to Okonski, 'Protesting, or counter-protesting, not only secures press for our views, but more importantly, steals media attention away from groups we oppose'. Okonski also claims the 'anti-globalization movement uses developing world spokespeople... and a variety of "indigenous" individuals to oppose technological progress, free trade, and change itself.' Counter-protesters must learn, Okonski argues, 'to give our ideas the same sort of compelling emotional appeal'.

Among other counter-protests, Okonski was the organiser of the Washington-area <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-16/kendra-okonski.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-color="background-color" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">'Walk for Capitalism'</a>. She also protested outside Starbucks, to counter demands that the milk <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0301starbucks.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-color="background-color" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">Starbucks</a> served should come from cows not treated with Monsanto's genetically engineered cattle drug rBGH - a drug banned in the main industrialised countries other than the United States.

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background: none;">Affiliations, Publications, Resources, Notes</h2>

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; width: auto; background: none;">Affiliations</h3>

<a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php?title=Liberalni_Institut&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Liberalni Institut (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Liberalni Institut</a>, consultant to its <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php?title=Center_for_Environmental_Studies&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Center for Environmental Studies (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Center for Environmental Studies</a> <a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">[2]</a>

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; width: auto; background: none;">Publications</h3>

<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">K. Okonski, 2001 '<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20010803015742/http://www.counterprotest.net/libertarian_activism.htm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">Taking our message to the streets</a>' Written for Liberty Magazine (unpublished to date), CounterProtest.net, retrieved from the Internet Archive of 3 August 2001.</li>

<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Adapt or Die (2003),</li>

<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Environment and Health (2004),</li>

<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">The Water Revolution (2006).</li>

</ul>

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; width: auto; background: none;">Resources</h3>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Ciaran McCullagh Photography, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-16/walk-for-capitalism-1.html" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">Free-market enthusiasts gather at end of Walk for Capitalism, the first global rally for economic freedom</a> Location: Arlington, Virginia Date: December 2001.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Okonski's website: <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.counterprotest.net/" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">http://www.counterprotest.net/</a> Now defunct. Internet Archive holdings: <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://waybackmachine.org//http://www.counterprotest.net" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat">http://waybackmachine.org//http://www.counterprotest.net</a></li>

</ul>

<h3 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; width: auto; background: none;">Notes</h3>

<li id="cite_note-0" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#cite_ref-0" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">↑</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1149" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">Astroturf uncovered in grassroots protest, August 28, 2002</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Kendra_Okonski#cite_ref-1" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">↑</a> Liberalni Institut <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.libinst.cz/stranka_en.php?id=32" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">Center for Environmental Studies</a>, accessed 22 march 2011</li>

</li></ol>

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===http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=169

Kendra Okonski works for the <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=155" style="text-decoration: none;">International Policy Network</a> (IPN) in London. Prior to 2001 Okonski worked as a research assistant at the <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=30" style="text-decoration: none;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a>, the Washington -based 'think tank' whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations like Philip Morris and Dow Chemicals.  Daughter of a US lumber industrialist, Okonski grew up in Montana, U.S.A., and Santiago, Chile. She studied economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan, where she also edited, The Restoration, a libertarian publication for college students.Okonski has edited a <a href="http://adaptordie.info/about_the_editor_and_contributors.php" style="text-decoration: none;">book</a> for the <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=155" style="text-decoration: none;">IPN</a> attacking the Kyoto protocol. The book's contributors include several who have been active in the GM debate - <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=178" style="text-decoration: none;">Martin Livermore</a>, <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=90" style="text-decoration: none;">Julian Morris</a>, <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=156" style="text-decoration: none;">Barun Mitra</a> and <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=126" style="text-decoration: none;">Philip Stott</a>. Okonski is described as the IPN's 'Sustainable Development Project Director.' As part of her job, she writes on trade and globalization, agriculture, and environmental issues. She has also fronted as the media contact for the deceptively named  <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=154" style="text-decoration: none;">Sustainable Development Network</a>(SDN). SDN appears  to be another guise of the IPN and its director <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=90" style="text-decoration: none;">Julian Morris</a>.During the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002, SDN played a key coordinating role for pro-corporate lobbying, including organising a pro-GM march. According to <a href="http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/Fake-Parade-Matthews3dec02.htm" style="text-decoration: none;">Val Giddings</a>, the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s Vice President of Food and Agriculture, the march was the very first time, 'real, live, developing-world farmers' were given a chance to speak for themselves and reject the 'empty arguments' of the biotech industry’s critics. Giddings also claimed that the farmers conferred a 'Bullshit Award', made with two varnished piles of cow dung, upon those that were deepening their poverty by denying them biotechnology. Among the marchers were <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=184" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">TJ Buthelezhi</a>,<a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=108" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chengal Reddy</a>, and representatives of <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=170" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">AfricaBio</a>.But an eyewitness report on the march suggests Giddings' account is highly misleading (<a href="http://www.adbusters.org/breaking_news/joburg/03.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Astroturf uncovered in grassroots protest</a>, August 28, 2002). Many of the marchers were not there to support GM. In fact, the main body of marchers had been recruited in the name of a protest against <a href="http://www.sdnetwork.net/informals/march.htm" style="text-decoration: none;">limitations placed on street trading</a> by the Johannesburg authorities.A week before a march had taken place in Johannesburg  involving thousands of poor, evicted and landless people, but it drew almost no media coverage. By contrast the 'pro-GM' march, despite involving only a few hundred people, captured <a href="http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/Fake-Parade-Matthews3dec02.htm" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">press coverage </a>on five continents.  <a href="http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-2matthews.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Subsequent comment</a> has focused on the fact that the organizers’ <a href="http://www.sdnetwork.net/media/farmers_march.htm" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">press release</a>gave Kendra Okonski as the media contact. Okonski was also the media contact on the <a href="http://www.libertyindia.org/events/bullshit_award_28august2002.htm" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">press release</a> for the 'Bullshit Award', which was not conferred by farmers, as Giddings claimed, but by a right-wing pressure group - the New-Delhi based <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=156" style="text-decoration: none;">Liberty Institute</a>, a part of the <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=154" style="text-decoration: none;">Sustainable Development Network</a>.Okonski has a long track record of organising 'protest'. She co-founded and managed the website <a href="http://bureaucrash.com/campaigns/counterprotest/" style="text-decoration: none;">counterprotest.net</a>. In an article entitled, <a href="http://bureaucrash.com/blogs/dispatches/000525.shtml" style="text-decoration: none;">Take it to the streets</a>, Okonski argues for 'a new approach to marketing libertarian ideas'. Of particular importance, she says, is 'the need to imitate the tactics of our opponents (environmentalists, human and civil rights groups, anti-globalization groups), both in the short run and the long run'.  According to Okonski, 'Protesting, or counter-protesting, not only secures press for our views, but more importantly, steals media attention away from groups we oppose'. Okonski also claims the 'anti-globalization movement uses developing world spokespeople... and a variety of "indigenous" individuals to oppose technological progress, free trade, and change itself.' Counter-protesters must learn, Okonski argues, 'to give our ideas the same sort of compelling emotional appeal'.Among other counter-protests, Okonski was the organiser of the Washington-area <a href="http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-16/kendra-okonski.html" style="text-decoration: none;">'Walk for Capitalism'</a>. She also protested
outside <a href="http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0301starbucks.htm" style="text-decoration: none;">Starbucks</a>, to counter demands that the milk Starbucks served should come from cows not treated with Monsanto's genetically engineered cattle drug rBGH - a drug banned in the main industrialised countries other than the United States.

<a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/print-profile1.asp?PrId=169" style="text-decoration: none;">Go to a Printer Friendly Page</a>

===

<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">Sustainable Development Network</h1>

<div id="jump-to-nav" class="mw-jump">Jump to: <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sustainable_Development_Network#mw-head">navigation</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sustainable_Development_Network#p-search">search</a></div>

The Sustainable Development Network (SDN) is a coalition formed in 2001, just in time for the world summit on sustainable development, to back the pro-industry agenda.

It shares staff (<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Roger_Bate" title="Roger Bate">Roger Bate</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Julian_Morris" title="Julian Morris">Julian Morris</a>) and a web server in common with the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/International_Policy_Network" title="International Policy Network">International Policy Network</a>.

The SDN also shares a phone number (+4420 7799 8913) with Hillary Everist of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/International_Policy_Network" title="International Policy Network">International Policy Network</a>, and Dr David G Green of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Economic_Affairs" title="Institute for Economic Affairs" class="mw-redirect">Institute for Economic Affairs</a>.

<h2>Staff</h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Julian_Morris" title="Julian Morris">Julian Morris</a>, Director</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kendra_Okonski" title="Kendra Okonski">Kendra Okonski</a>, Coordinator</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Roger_Bate" title="Roger Bate">Roger Bate</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.freemarketfoundation.com/pmfull.asp?oid=916&idv=44">[1]</a></li>

</ul>

<h2>Members</h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Consumer_Alert" title="Consumer Alert">Consumer Alert</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ag_Bio_Foundation&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Ag Bio Foundation (page does not exist)">Ag Bio Foundation</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Association_for_Liberal_Thinking&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Association for Liberal Thinking (page does not exist)">Association for Liberal Thinking</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ARCH-Vahini&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="ARCH-Vahini (page does not exist)">ARCH-Vahini</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Africa_Fighting_Malaria" title="Africa Fighting Malaria">Africa Fighting Malaria</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bazaar_Chintan&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Bazaar Chintan (page does not exist)">Bazaar Chintan</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Centro_de_Divulgacion_del_Conocimiento_Economico&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Centro de Divulgacion del Conocimiento Economico (page does not exist)">Centro de Divulgacion del Conocimiento Economico</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Centre_for_Civil_Society" title="Centre for Civil Society">Centre for Civil Society</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Centre_for_New_Europe" title="Centre for New Europe" class="mw-redirect">Centre for New Europe</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Centro_Interdisciplinar_de_Etica_e_Economia_Personalista&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Centro Interdisciplinar de Etica e Economia Personalista (page does not exist)">Centro Interdisciplinar de Etica e Economia Personalista</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Consumer_Alert" title="Consumer Alert">Consumer Alert</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/European_Science_and_Environment_Forum" title="European Science and Environment Forum">European Science and Environment Forum</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fundacion_Atlas_para_una_Sociedad_Libre&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Fundacion Atlas para una Sociedad Libre (page does not exist)">Fundacion Atlas para una Sociedad Libre</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Democracy_in_Africa" title="Foundation for Democracy in Africa">Foundation for Democracy in Africa</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Free_Market_Foundation" title="Free Market Foundation">Free Market Foundation</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fundacion_DL&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Fundacion DL (page does not exist)">Fundacion DL</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hong_Kong_Centre_for_Economic_Research&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Hong Kong Centre for Economic Research (page does not exist)">Hong Kong Centre for Economic Research</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Energy_Research" title="Institute for Energy Research">Institute for Energy Research</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Instituto_de_Libre_Empresa&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Instituto de Libre Empresa (page does not exist)">Instituto de Libre Empresa</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Instituto_Liberal&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Instituto Liberal (page does not exist)">Instituto Liberal</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_of_Public_Affairs" title="Institute of Public Affairs">Institute of Public Affairs</a> (Melbourne)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Inter-Region_Economic_Network&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Inter-Region Economic Network (page does not exist)">Inter-Region Economic Network</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Public_Policy_Analysis&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Institute for Public Policy Analysis (page does not exist)">Institute for Public Policy Analysis</a> (Lagos)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kisan_Coordination_Committee" title="Kisan Coordination Committee">Kisan Coordination Committee</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Libertad_y_Desarrollo&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Libertad y Desarrollo (page does not exist)">Libertad y Desarrollo</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Liberty_Institute" title="Liberty Institute">Liberty Institute</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Making_Our_Economy_Right&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Making Our Economy Right (page does not exist)">Making Our Economy Right</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Manushi&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Manushi (page does not exist)">Manushi</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Open_Republic_Institute&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Open Republic Institute (page does not exist)">Open Republic Institute</a></li>

</ul>

<h2>References</h2>

<ul>

<li>Jonathan Matthews, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/jon.htm">The Fake Parade</a>", Environment, 3 December 2002</li>

</ul><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CORE and Monsanto</h3>In 2005, CORE ran <a target="blank" href="http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/parade011905.cfm" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">a pro-genetically modified foods campaign.</a> According to <a target="blank" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050208040315/http://www.core-online.org/" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">an archived version of CORE's website</a> the pro-GM food campaign was sponsored by ag-food and pesticide giant Monsanto. You can click <a target="blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28573657@N05/2717795276/in/photostream/" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">here</a> to see a screen capture of the CORE site in 2005 where Monsanto is listed as "CORE's corporate partner in the quest for bio-tech information."According to the Wikipedia entry, <a target="blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">Monsanto</a> is by far the leading producer of <a target="blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering" title="Genetic engineering" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">genetically engineered</a> (GE) <a target="blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed" title="Seed" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">seed</a>, holding 70%–100% market share for various <a target="blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture" title="Agriculture" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">crops</a>.In January 2005, Monsanto's Chairman and CEO, Hugh Grant, chaired CORE's celebratory reception in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. A screen shot of the <a target="blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28573657@N05/2716995401/" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">Monsanto photo is archived here.</a>Also, in January 2005, CORE organized what it called the "<a target="blank" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050112105545/www.core-online.org/events/bio+brochure.htm" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">UN World Conference on Biotechnology</a>." The closing address for the conference was made by Gerald Steiner, Monsanto's Executive Vice President.Roy Innis has penned articles <a target="blank" href="http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19127" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">promoting the use of DDT</a> in Africa as a means of saving lives. CORE also opened an office in Uganda and<a target="blank" href="http://www.pan-uk.org/Info/DDT/comeback.html" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">organized pro-DDT rallies.</a>In 2004, <a target="blank" href="http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14027" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">CORE held an awards ceremony</a> at a World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, where they announced Greenpeace as a recipient of their "Green Power-Black Death" award. At the ceremony Niger Innis stated: “And the winner is--Greenpeace! For leading million-dollar campaigns against energy, pesticides, biotechnology, trade, and economic development that could improve or save millions of lives."=<header style="margin-bottom: 15px; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding-bottom: 20px; line-height: 30px !important; background-image: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAMkAAAAICAYAAABTctsUAAAAOklEQVRYw+3WoQEAIADDsP20/28bByCwiLjoqmZbtqVtmfm2CMwPi8D8cERgtlvMdovZbjHbLeZ/fQDGOC9jjq4kiAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 0px 100%; background-repeat: repeat-x;">Monsanto's Fake Parade Hits New York</h1>on <time datetime="2005-01-17" pubdate="">17 January 2005</time>.</header><div class="content clearfix" style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1.The Fake Parade hits New York
2.The (original) Fake Parade
-------

1.The Fake Parade hits New York
by Jonathan Matthews

Just over 2 years ago I wrote an article called The Fake Parade which was all about how Monsanto and their associates were trying to hide the company's "soapbox behind a black man's face".

The article noted, amongst other things, how in late 1999 the New York Times reported that a street protest against genetic engineering outside an FDA public hearing in Washington DC was disrupted by a group of African-Americans carrying placards such as "Biotech saves children's lives" and "Biotech equals jobs." The Times learned that Monsanto's PR company, Burson-Marsteller, had paid a Baptist Church from a poor neighborhood to bus in these "demonstrators" as part of a wider campaign "to get groups of church members, union workers and the elderly to speak in favor of genetically engineered foods."

Now Monsanto has gone one better and has signed up its very own black advocacy group. If you don't believe me, visit the home page of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and beside images of freedom riders and civil rights activists murdered by the KKK, you'll see the Monsanto logo under the legend CORE's "corporate partner".
http://www.core-online.org

Tonight (17th) Monsanto's Chairman and CEO, Hugh Grant is chairing CORE's celebratory reception in honour of the Martin Luther King National Holiday.
http://www.core-online.org/events/current_mlk.htm

Tomorrow (18th) at CORE's "UN World Conference on Biotechnology" Monsanto's Executive Vice President will make the closing address.
http://www.core-online.org/events/biotech%20seminar.htm

The contributors to the conference, apart from Monsanto, are a mix of rabidly pro-GM scientists and rightwing lobbyists, like Paul Driessen CORE's Senior Policy Advisor, who is part of the Wise Use-founding Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. The aim of Wise Use was to counter the environmental movement with a broad-ranging coalition of interest groups, including industry-funded front groups and 'grassroots groups', often organised by PR consultants on behalf of corporations or trade associations.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=248

Julian Morris who is among the contributors to CORE's "UN World Conference on Biotechnology" also features in The Fake Parade. Originally billed as being present was Chengal Reddy who also played a key role in The Fake Parade (see below). His Indian Farmers Federation will be represented.

Someone else who is part of the "UN World Conference" is CORE's Niger Innis. Innis is a protege of black broadcaster Armstrong Williams. Innis stands in for Williams on the TV show America's Black Forum whenever Williams is otherwise engaged.

Williams was recently revealed as having pocketed $240,000 in federal taxpayer money for PR promotion of Bush's educational policy. The journalists who started America's Black Forum , and who now disown it, describe Williams as "the premiere Black political whore in America".
http://www.blackcommentator.com/20_commentary_1.html
http://www.suntimes.com/output/mitchell/cst-nws-mitch16.html

Tomorrow the stand-in and protege of America's "premiere Black political whore" will be standing alongside the Executive Vice President of CORE's "corporate partner" when he rounds up a day spent considering the remarkable contribution that GM can make to helping the world's poor and the evil people who selfishly try and obstruct its global adoption.
http://www.core-online.org/events/biotech%20seminar.htm
------

THE FAKE PARADE
Under the banner of populist protest, multinational corporations manufacture the poor
By Jonathan Matthews
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=254
Environment, 3 December 2002

"Carrying his placard the man in front of me was clearly one of the poorest of the poor. His shoes were not only threadbare, they were tattered, merely rags barely being held together."

So begins a graphic description of a demonstration that took place at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg. The protesters were "mainly poor, virtually all black, and mostly women... street traders and farmers" with an unpalatable message. As an article in a South African periodical put it, "Surely this must have been the environmentalists”š worst nightmare. Real poor people marching in the streets and demanding development while opposing the eco-agenda of the Green Left."

And seldom can the views of the poor, in this case a few hundred demonstrators, have been paid so much attention. Articles highlighting the Johannesburg march popped up the world over, in Africa, North America, India, Australia and Israel. In Britain even The Times ran a commentary, under the heading, "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me".

With the summit's passing, the Johannesburg march, far from fading from view, has taken on a still deeper significance. In the November issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, Val Giddings, the President of the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO), argues that the event marked "something new, something very big" that will make us "look back on Johannesburg as something of a watershed event - a turning point." What made the march so pivotal, he said, was that for the very first time, "real, live, developing-world farmers" were "speaking for themselves" and challenging the "empty arguments of the self-appointed individuals who have professed to speak on their behalf."

To help give them a voice, Giddings singles out the statement of one of the marchers, Chengal Reddy, leader of the Indian Farmers Federation. "Traditional organic farming...," Reddy says, "led to mass starvation in India for centuries... Indian farmers need access to new technologies and especially to biotechnologies."

Giddings also notes that the farmers expressed their contempt for the "empty arguments" of many of the Earth Summiteers by honoring them with a "Bullshit Award" made from two varnished piles of cow dung. The award was given, in particular, to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, for her role in "advancing policies that perpetuate poverty and hunger"

A powerful rebuke, no doubt. But if anyone deserves the cow dung, it is the President of BIO, for almost every element of the spectacle he describes has been carefully contrived and orchestrated. Take, for instance, Chengal Reddy, the "farmer" that Giddings quotes. Reddy is not a poor farmer, nor even the representative of poor farmers. Indeed, there is precious little to suggest he is even well-disposed towards the poor. The "Indian Farmers Federation" that he leads is a lobby of big commercial farmers in Andhra Pradesh. On occasion Reddy has admitted to knowing very little about farming, having never farmed in his life. He is, in reality, a politician and businessman whose family are a prominent right-wing political force in Andhra Pradesh - his father having coined the saying, "There is only one thing Dalits (members of the untouchable caste) are good for, and that is being kicked".

If it seems open to doubt that Reddy was in Johannesburg to help the poor speak for themselves, the identity of the march”šs organizers is also not a source of confidence. Although the Times”š headline said "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me", the media contact on the organizers' press release was "Kendra Okonski", the daughter of a US lumber industrialist who has worked for various right wing anti-regulatory NGOs - all funded and directed, needless to say, by "whites". These include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based "think tank" whose multi-million dollar budget comes from major US corporations, among them BIO member Dow Chemicals. Okonski also runs the website Counterprotest.net, where her specialty is helping right wing lobbyists take to the streets in mimicry of popular protesters.

Given this, it hardly needs saying that Giddings' "Bullshit Award" was far from, as he suggests, the imaginative riposte of impoverished farmers to India's most celebrated environmentalist. It was, in fact, the creation of another right-wing pressure group "the Liberty Institute" based in New Delhi and well known for its fervent support of deregulation, GM crops and Big Tobacco.

The Liberty Institute is part of the same network that organized the rally: the deceptively-named "Sustainable Development Network." In London, the SDN shares offices, along with many of its key personnel  including Okonski with the International Policy Network, a group whose Washington address just happens to be that of the CEI. The SDN is run by Julian Morris, its ubiquitous director, who also claims the title of Environment and Technology Programme Director for the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank that has advocated, amongst other interesting ideas, that African countries be sold off to multinational corporations in the interests of "good government".

The involvement of the likes of Morris, Okonski and Reddy doesn't mean, of course, that no "real poor people," were involved in the Johannesburg march. There were indeed poor people there. James MacKinnon, who reported on the summit for the North American magazine Adbusters, witnessed the march first hand and told of seeing many impoverished street traders, who seemed genuinely aggrieved with the authorities for denying them their usual trading places in the streets around the summit. The flier distributed by the march organizers to recruit these people played on this grievance, and presented the march as a chance to demand, "Freedom to trade". The flier made no mention of "biotechnology" or "development", nor any other issue on the "eco-agenda of the Green Left".

For all that, there were some real farmers present as well. Mackinnon says he spotted some wearing anti-environmentalist t-shirts, with slogans like "Stop Global Whining." This aroused his curiousity, since small-scale African farmers are not normally to be found among those jeering the "bogus science" of climate change. Yet here they were, with slogans on placards and T-shirts: "Save the Planet from Sustainable Development", "Say No To Eco-Imperialism", "Greens: Stop Hurting the Poor" and "Biotechnology for Africa". On approaching the protesters, however, Mackinnon discovered that all of the props had been made available to the marchers by the organizers. When he tried to converse with some of the farmers about their pro-GM T-shirts, "They smiled shyly; none of them could speak or read English."

Another irresistible question is how impoverished farmers - according to Giddings, there were farmers on the march from five different countries - afforded the journey to Johannesburg from lands as far away as the Philippines and India. Here, too, there is reason for suspicion. In late 1999 the New York Times reported that a street protest against genetic engineering outside an FDA public hearing in Washington DC was disrupted by a group of African-Americans carrying placards such as "Biotech saves children's lives" and "Biotech equals jobs." The Times learned that Monsanto's PR company, Burson-Marsteller, had paid a Baptist Church from a poor neighborhood to bus in these "demonstrators" as part of a wider campaign "to get groups of church members, union workers and the elderly to speak in favor of genetically engineered foods."

The industry”šs fingerprints are all over Johannesburg as well. Chengal Reddy, the "farmer" that the President of BIO singled out as an example of farmers from the poorer world "speaking for themselves", has for at least a decade featured prominently in Monsanto'spromotional work in India. Other groups represented on the march, including AfricaBio, have also been closely aligned with Monsanto's lobbying for its products. Reddy is known to have been brought to Johannesburg by AfricaBio.

And here lies the real key to the President of BIO's account of the march, and specifically to the attack on Vandana Shiva. Monsanto and BIO want to project an image of GM crop acceptance with a Southern face. That's why Monsanto's Internet homepage used to be adorned with the faces of smiling Asian children. So when an Indian critic of the biotech industry gets featured, as Shiva was recently, on the cover of Time magazine as an environmental hero, the brand is under attack, and has to be protected.

The counterattack takes place via a contrarian lens, one that projects the attackers' vices onto their target. Thus the problem becomes not Monsanto using questionable tactics to push its products onto a wary South, but malevolent agents of the rich world obstructing Monsanto's acceptance in a welcoming Third World. For this reason the press release for the "Bullshit Award" accuses Shiva, amongst other things, of being "a mouthpiece of western eco-imperialism". The media contact for this symbolic rejection of neocolonialism? The American, Kendra Okonski. The mouthpiece denouncing an Indian environmentalist as an agent of the West is a Western mouthpiece.

The careful framing of the messages and the actors in the rally in Johannesburg provides but one particularly gaudy spectacle in a continuing fake parade. In particular, the Internet provides a perfect medium for such showcases, where the gap between the virtual and the real is easily erased.

Take the South-facing website Foodsecurity.net, which promotes itself as "the web's most complete source of news and information about global food security concerns and sustainable agricultural practices". Foodsecurity.net claims to be "an independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world". Despite its global reach, however, Foodsecurity.net's only named staff member is its "African Director", Dr. Michael Mbwille, a Tanzanian doctor who's forever penning articles defending Monsanto and attacking the likes of Greenpeace.

The news and information at Foodsecurity.net is largely pro-GM articles, often vituperative in content and boasting headlines like "The Villainous Vandana Shiva" or "Altered Crops Called Boon for Poor". When one penetrates beyond the news pages, the content is very limited. A single message graces the messageboard posted by an <a href="mailto:myoung@bivwood.com" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">myoung@bivwood.com</a> - the domain name of The Bivings Group, an internet PR company that numbers Monsanto among its clients. There's also an event posting from an Andura Smetacek, recently identified in an article in The Guardian as an e-mail front used by Monsanto to run a campaign of character assassination against its scientific and environmental critics.

The site is registered to a Graydon Forrer, currently the managing director of Life Sciences Strategies, a company that specializes in "communications programmes" for the bio-science industries. A piece of information that is not usually disclosed in Graydon Forrer”šs self-presentation is that he was previously Monsanto”šs director of executive communications. Indeed, he seems to have been working for the company in 1999 - the same year the site of this "independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world" was first registered. Foodsecurity”šs "African Director", Dr. Mbwille, is not, incidentally, in Africa at the moment. He is enjoying a sabbatical observing medical practice in St. Louis, MissouriËœthe home town, as it happens, of the Monsanto Corporation.

Foodsecurity.net forms but one of a whole series of websites with undisclosed links to biotech industry lobbyists or PR companies, as our previous research has demonstrated. But despite the virtual circus oscillating about him, if the President of BIO were really interested in hearing poor "live, developing-world farmers... speaking for themselves", he need look no further than Chengal Reddy's home state of Andhra Pradesh. Here small-scale farmers and landless laborers were consulted as part of a meticulously conducted "citizens' jury" on World Bank-backed proposals to industrialize local agriculture and introduce GM crops. Having heard all sides of the argument, including as it happens the views of Chengal Reddy, the jury unanimously rejected these proposals, which are likely to force more than 100,000 people off the land. Similar citizens' juries on GM crops in Brazil and in the Indian state of Karnataka have come to similar conclusions - something that the President of BIO is almost certainly aware of.

But rainchecks on the real views of the poor count for little in a world where "something new, something very big" and "a turning point" in the global march towards our corporate future, turns out to be Monsanto's soapbox behind a black man's face.

...
For further information about citizens”š juries on GM food and farming in the Global South see:
the report on Food and Farming Futures for Andhra Pradesh,
http://www.iied.org/pdf/Prajateerpu.pdf,
the press article, "The Locals Know What Aid They Need",
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=276687,
and the website of the development charity, ActionAid,
http://www.actionaid.org/ourpriorities/foodrights/gmtechnology/gmtechnology.shtml

For more information about Monsanto's cyberwar against its critics:
<a href="http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html</a></div>ntbcw/: Mangosuthu Buthelezi (born 27 August 1928) is a South African politician and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_people" title="Zulu people" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">Zulu</a> tribal leader who founded the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkatha_Freedom_Party" title="Inkatha Freedom Party" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">Inkatha Freedom Party</a> (IFP) in 1975 and was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chief_Ministers_of_KwaZulu" title="List of Chief Ministers of KwaZulu" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">Chief Minister</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KwaZulu" title="KwaZulu" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">KwaZulu</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan" title="Bantustan" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">bantustan</a> until 1994. He was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Department_of_Home_Affairs" title="South African Department of Home Affairs" class="mw-redirect" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">Minister of Home Affairs of South Africa</a> from 1994 to 2004. His <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isibongo" title="Isibongo" style="line-height: 22.4px; text-decoration: none; background: none;">praise name</a> is Shenge.Throughout much of the apartheid area, Buthelezi was considered one of the foremost black leaders. He played a key role in creating a framework for a negotiated solution to South Africa's racial conflict, signing the landmark <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahlabatini_Declaration_of_Faith" title="Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith</a> in 1974 with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Schwarz" title="Harry Schwarz" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Harry Schwarz</a>. -----<table border="0" align="center" width="100%" class="tab"><tbody><tr><td>South African farmer, Thembitshe Joseph Buthelezi, has a long established relationship with Monsanto and the biotech industry. With their assistance he has been brought to Washington, Brussels, Pretoria, St Louis, London, Johannesburg, and Philadelphia to help promote GM foods.  On one occasion Monsanto paid for him to travel several hundred miles to have lunch with US Trade Secretary Robert Zoellick at the company's office near Pretoria, South Africa, and a year later in May 2003, Buthelezi was by Zoellick's side at the press conference at which the Trade Secretary formally announced a US WTO case against EU restrictions on GM imports.      In August 2002 Buthelezi turned up at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. He  gave interviews and attended at a pro-GM <a href="http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=254" style="text-decoration: none;">'farmers' rally</a> covertly organised by Monsanto and a network of pro-GM lobbyists

Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies in his report, <a href="http://allafrica.com/sustainable/resources/00010161.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Genetically Modified Crops and Sustainable Poverty Alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Assessment of Current Evidence</a>, describes Buthelezi as 'a clean-shaven, middle-aged black farmer from Makhathini'. He notes how Buthelezi's accounts of his positive experiences with Monsanto's Bt cotton are suspiciously similar to Monsanto press releasesAaron deGrassi also challenges the way in which Buthelezi is being displayed as a 'representative' of the African smallholding community of farmers. He notes, 'the Council for Biotechnology Information calls him a "small farmer," and others describe his life as "hand-to-mouth existence."' <a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=186&page=N" style="text-decoration: none;">Andrew Natsios</a>, the head of<a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=165" style="text-decoration: none;">USAID</a>, has described him to US congressmen as as a 'small farmer struggling just at the subsistence level.' However, says deGrassi, 'independent reporters have revealed that, with two wives and more than 66 acres, he is one of the largest farmers in Makhathini and chairs the area's farmers' federation encompassing 48 farmers' associations.'

Buthelezi is one of several farmers used by Monsanto and other lobbyists used to represent an area 'where most farmers cultivate just a few hectares, and only half the population can read'. Yet Monsanto's 'representative' farmers, deGrassi says, are school administrators and agricultural college graduates, owning dozens of hectares of land.Critics have coined the nickname 'Bt Buthelezi' to illustrate his  'unconditional support to Bt cotton: during a trip to Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis, Buthelezi was quoted as saying, "I wouldn't care if it were from the devil himself."'</td></tr><tr><td> </td></tr><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.lobbywatch.org/print-profile1.asp?PrId=184" style="text-decoration: none;">Go to a Printer Friendly Page</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="font-weight: bold;">===</div><div>PERC 2006</div><div>
</div><div>n his latest book, Collapse: How Societies Succeed or Fail, Pulitzer Prize-winning

author Jared Diamond attempts to explain how a number of small, isolated

societies, from Easter Island to Greenland, destroyed their environments and

disappeared. A chapter of the book is devoted to the state of Montana. Diamond

says that Montana’s environmental problems “include almost all of the dozen types

of problems that have undermined pre-industrial societies in the past, or that now

threaten societies elsewhere in the world as well.”

Kendra Okonski, a native of Montana who now lives in England, doesn’t

accept Diamond’s treatment of Montana. In this essay, “Montana: On the Verge

of Collapse?” she argues that Diamond has misread Montana’s history and misunderstands

its environmental conditions and their causes. Her essay is adapted

from an essay published in Energy & Environment in 2005 as part of a special issue

dedicated to the book Collapse. We are publishing it as part of the PERC Policy

Series and, specifically, a series on the changing western United States sponsored

by the DuFresne Foundation and the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust.

Since 2001, Okonski has been the environment program director for the International

Policy Network, an institute based in London. She is editor or coeditor

of several books, including The Water Revolution (forthcoming), Environment and

Health (2004), and Adapt or Die (2003), and is a fellow of the Royal Society for the

Arts. Previously, Okonski worked as a researcher at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

in Washington, D.C. She has a degree in economics from Hillsdale College.

We appreciate the cooperation of Bill Hughes of Multi-Science Publishing

Co., Ltd., and Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, editor of Energy & Environment. The

author also thanks Andrew Morriss, Robert Natelson, and Julian Morris for their

assistance. The PERC Policy Series is edited by Jane S. Shaw; Mandy-Scott Bachelier

is production manager and graphic artist. PERC, the Property and Environment

Research Center, is a nonprofit institute dedicated to improving environmental

quality through property rights and markets. It is located in Bozeman, Montana</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">===</div>

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Okonski, K

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