Greenpeace poisons hungry crowd. Or not?

Greenpeace activists in Thailand recently tried a publicity stunt to emphasize the imaginary threat of genetically engineered papaya. They were upset, as usual, about an suggestion by the Agriculture ministry to allow open field testing of GM crops.

So the Greenpeace scare mongers decided to take some GM papaya, eleven tons of it, and dump it in front of the Ministry blocking three of their gates.

The protest ran into a problem. It didn’t last long. A large crowd of onlookers rushed the pile of fruit and started packing it up and carting it off thrilled at the “free lunch” that Greenpeace had inadvertently provided them. Even officials from the Ministry grabbed some of the free food, apparently unconcerned about any supposed danger.

Greenpeace activists who tried to convince the crowd of the fictional dangers of the fruit were ignored as the happy recipients of the unintended largess took all they could carry.

On man who was sitting in his car at a stop light jumped out of the car to stock up on fruit. He told the Bangkok Post: “I’m ot scared of GM papayas. I’m scared I won’t have any to eat.”

The head doomsday prophet for the Greenpeace cult, Thailand diocese, complained that the reason people carted off the supposedly dangerous fruit was the government’s fault. Ms. Natwipha Ewasakul whined that this proves “the failure of government agencies to educate people about the possible health risks of genetically-engineered crops.”

Oh! In related news Mr. I.M. Twit bitched that the prevalence of radio signals is proof that government has not sufficiently warned the public that such signals disturb the alien life force that keeps the planet in harmony. “Continued use of radio signals could unbalance the whole planet,” said Twit, “This would lead to the eradication of gravity and we’d all die of thirst as the rain would fall upwards.” Mr. Twit showed how umbrellas could be used to catch the rising water to stave off dehydration.

And now back to the real twits.

Here is an interesting legal problem for Greenpeace. They argue that GM papaya is dangerous. So I suggest that some one in Thailand, who ate this supposedly dangerous papaya, which Greenpeace publicly dumped in front of hungry people, now sue Greenpeace for a significant amount of damages. They could go to court with Greenpeace’s own scare propaganda as evidence that the fruit is supposedly dangerous and that Greenpeace put their live at risk.

Could Greenpeace then argue the fruit was not dangerous and that it posed no risk to the happy consumers blessed with this windfall? If Greenpeace contends in court that the fruit is as dangerous as they pretend then they should have taken much stronger precautions to prevent hungry people from eating the “dangerous” fruit. As I see it Greenpeace can either say the fruit was safe and thus they were not negligent. Or they can say that their propaganda is correct, the fruit is dangerous, and they were negligent in putting it on public display when it was highly likely that it would lead to people consuming the fruit.

So the Thai people who got that fruit appear to be in line for being very lucky again, if they follow this tactic. Not only did they get a free meal out of the witless Greenpeace twits but if they play their cards right they can now demand compensation from Greenpeace for putting their lives at risk through the negligent distribution of “dangerous” food products. Oh, that would be juicy. I don’t see how Greenpeace can win a situation like that. Either they admit they lie about dangers or they admit they took no precaution regarding the danger and put the public at risk. I hope the litigants ask for lots of damages.

When in doubt blame technology.

Cole Porter wrote a song with the phrase “bees do it” but of late bees haven’t been doing a lot of anything except dying. The bees leave their colonies and never return. This was labeled “colony collapse disorder”.

Of course there are those who have certain axes to grind who immediately had the culprits they wanted to focus attention upon. Well, the Organic Consumers Association ran a headline on their web site claiming: “Pesticides May Cause Bees to Forget Location of Hive.” In addition they said: “There is also concern that some genetically modified crops may be producing pollen or nectar that is problematic for the bees...”

The media I had read said the disappearing bees were a mystery. So I was curious as to why some environmental groups and food faddists were so quick to blame pesticide or GE crops.

The Sierre Club sent a letter to Senator Tom Harkin demanding that an investigation into how “exposure to genetically engineered crops and their plant-produced pesticides” are “the cause or contributory factor” in Colony Collapse Disorder. They imply that GE crops may be causing a form of AIDS for bees and want more regulation of GE crops.

Ron Bailey at Reason found this letter quite strange since studies the Sierre Club referenced didn’t actually back up their fantasies. And he noted that the problem was also appearing in Europe that prides itself on being scientific Neanderthals who are “biotech free”.

So without GE to blame what did the anti-tech crowd in Europe do? They blamed cellphones. The Independent in the UK claimed that there is evidence that cellphones interfere “with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives.” One man who has been attacking cell phones for year, Dr. George Carlo, insisted that “the possibility is real” that cell phones are to blame. As to be expected the paper concentrated on a handful of flawed studies ignoring the bigger studies completely.

The obvious reason the cellphone theory was flawed from the start was that they have been around for years. If they interfere with bees homing instincts then why didn’t they interfere last year or the year before?

Apparently the mystery may been solved. The Los Angeles Times reports that the preliminary results of a investigation into the problem “proved the solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.” What do you think it was?

I’ll give you a hint. Neither cell phones nor biotech crops have anything to do with the problem. In fact the problem is entirely natural. The researchers are finding “a single-celled parasite called Nosema Ceranae” along with two other fungi and some viruses in dead bees that have been studied.

The theory is that fungus in particular weakens bees and they are too weak to return to the hive. Once infected they fly out and never return leaving a ghost hive behind. Scientists say that this is similar to another fungus which also is deadly to bees and if the culprit can probably be treated with an antibiotic fumagillin used on the other fungus.

Now think about this for a second. First, there was a mystery and one that was potential harmful to human life since bees are used to pollinate crops that we depend upon for our survival. So something bad happened. We had no evidence as to what caused the problem. As I said, it was a mystery.

In the absence of evidence some of our friends in the Green movement immediately started claiming that humans were responsible. That it was cell phones or GE crops. By the way bees actually prefer some GE crops because they produce more nectar which is the reward bees get for pollinating. In essence these GE crops were a pay raise for bees.

It was like a game of Clue (Cluedo in some places). Except without clues being gathered the Greenies were saying “It was man who killed the bees, in the fields and the weapon was human technology.” This is really an automatic response from them. Anything in nature takes place that seems different from before must be an anthropogenic disaster in the making. Too bad for them the first clues are pointing to a fungus.

Don’t worry. Other changes will take place in nature and they will once again blame humans and denounce technology as the method. They can’t help it. They automatically blames humans for any natural anomaly the ways Nazis blamed Jews for anything that was problem. Once you have a favored scapegoat they get the rap for everything.