The rage and bile that exploded upon the selection of Sarah Palin by John McCain as his Vice Presidential running mate in the ongoing US Presidential Elections raises the legitimate question, just what has she done? What is there either in this woman's record or resume to provoke such a ferocious response from the liberal media?

What did we know of her when she was introduced?

That she was a mother of five who had brought into this world a baby boy with Down’s syndrome, thus abiding by her religious beliefs. That she was a small-town conservative who had risen from mayor of Wasilla (Population: 9,700) to be governor of Alaska, a state twice the size of Texas.

That she was a reformer who had dethroned an Old Boys' Network by dumping a sitting Republican governor. That she had taken on Big Oil, taxed the companies and returned the money in $1,200 checks to every citizen of Alaska. And that she had cut a deal with Canada to build a pipeline to bring natural gas to her fellow Americans. Add to that the fact that she had an approval rating in excess of 80%, the highest approval rating of any Governor of any state.

And, oh, yes. She was "Sarah Barracuda" — a fierce high school athlete, a runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, a Feminist for Life, lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and accomplished moose hunter. Introduced by McCain, she praised Hillary Clinton and pledged to finish her work by smashing through the glass ceiling in which Hillary had made 18 million cracks.

What, in any or all of this, is there to justify the feral attacks within minutes of her introduction? What had she done to cause this outburst? Answer: absolutely nothing.

In the Republican National Convention, Palin and her supporters have started pointing the finger at the liberal media as the source of much of the unjustified hysterical attacks!

In many ways, palm oil can empathize with what Palin is going through.  Palm oil is one of the healthiest edible oils around and is probably one of the cheapest and yet most sustainable amongst the oil seeds in the market.  It is so productive that one hectare of oil palm plantation yields more than 4.5 metric tones of oil which puts the typical 0.5 metric tones yield of competing oil seeds like soy, sunflower and canola in the shade. This exceptional yield makes palm oil a preferred source of feedstock for biofuel and biodiesel.

In view of its incredible productivity, Malaysia hitherto the world’s largest producer of palm oil has for the past decade or so confined palm oil plantations to legitimate agricultural land.  There was really no necessity to destroy tropical rainforest to plant palm oil.

This is borne out by the fact that the country has carried the mantle of the world’s largest producer of palm oil for more than a century and yet the country can still boast of more than 65% forest cover.  The same can be said for Indonesia, currently the world’s largest producer.  Juxtapose this 65% forest cover found in these two countries with the typical 20% forest cover found in the countries of the industrialized west?

Perhaps because of its inherent qualities and productivity, palm oil came in for some withering smears, initially from the curiously named “Center for Science in the Public Interest” (CSPI). Accusing palm oil of being made up of saturated fat and therefore, dangerous to heart health, CSPI launched a vicious smear campaign against palm oil through the mainstream media.  When dozens of scientific studies were brought to bear on the issue, proving that palm oil was, in fact heart friendly as, being a vegetable oil and therefore cholesterol-free, palm oil is also rich in antioxidants such as Co-enzyme Q10, beta carotenes and tocotrienols.

CSPI laid low for a few years and then launched an emotive but disingenuous campaign accusing palm oil of causing massive deforestation and thereby threatening the extinction of, inter alia, the orang utan.  The liberal media went to town on this and before long one environmental NGO after another from Wetlands to Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and RAN were trying to outdo each other in attacking palm oil.

But what are the facts.  The deforestation claims are manifestly untrue, at least in Malaysia’s case as palm oil plantations are strictly cultivated with environmental laws stringently enforced.  However, the existing 65% forest cover in Malaysia after more than one century of palm oil cultivation, by and of itself is evidence enough to disprove the claims of deforestation.  

What about issue of orang utan extinction.  RAN, in its website even went to the extent of claiming that the orang utan may becoame extinct as early as 2011.  Let’s examine the facts.

Whilst it’s true that the most recent estimate for the Sumatran Orangutan is around 7,300 individuals in the wild, while the Bornean Orangutan population is estimated at between 45,000 and 69,000.  How can the orang utan, by any leap of logic or stretch of imagination, go extinct within 3 years.  Yet the liberal media took the story and ran with it.

To illustrate how little credibility the story has, major conservation centres had been established in Indonesia including those at Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas have been set up and they include the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah.  

The Malaysian Palm Oil Council has also recently launched the Malaysian Palm Oil Wildlife Conservation Fund at the International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference. Malaysia is also a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) and the orang utan is frequently used as the national animal mascot in international sporting events such as the Commonwealth Games.  Does this lend any credence to the contention by RAN that the orang utan will go extinct, at  least in Malaysia?

It may be possible to pack even more downward spin in what is being said and written about palm oil, but modern media records are being set. Palm oil has to be stopped because palm oil is a threat to its competitors and looks like trouble.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, it is time that the media wakes up to the fact that the environmental NGO’s have a hidden agenda in wanting to demolish palm oil!  It’s about time that the media asks these environmental NGO’s some probing questions and examines their accounts, every single one of them.  RAN, FOE, Greenpeace, Wetlands.  The expose could be very interesting!  THE END.