“Bonus Eventus” Pseudo-scandal: Bring in the Bottom Feeders
Corporate Europe Observatory twists reality to demand a European Parliament investigation
Corporate Europe Observatory pretend to be a “civil society organization”. They write to the European Parliament with demands... It's a tried-and-tested strategy for creating chaos and manipulation.
We'll see in this article how (alleged) facts are twisted to suit the different narratives of the participants in this “investigative” consortium.
As we have seen, notably here and here, a vast activist communications campaign operation, ultimately one of denigration and disinformation, was carried out against a small American communications company, v-Fluence.
In particular, Le Monde reported on a – completely imaginary – attempt to sabotage European Green Deal projects on agriculture and biodiversity. The plot was allegedly hatched by the US Department of Agriculture and piloted by the White House Writers Group (WHWG) and v-Fluence. The latter is also accused of drawing up legally questionable profiles of players on the GMO and pesticide scene.
Corporate Europe Observatory go into action
All this is good stuff for European anti-GMO and anti-pesticide activism.
The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has written to the European Parliament, enlisting the help of a clique of entities with which it is often in cahoots, as well as a few others which are not known and aspire to become illustrious through their signatures.
Their opus publication is “Scandal exposed: targeted undermining of the farm to fork strategy by US PR firms - An open letter to the EP from CSOs”.
According to its profile in the European Union's Transparency Register:
CEO is a stichting under Dutch law, thus enjoying tax optimization. While this is, of course, not forbidden, most of its operations take place in Brussels.
CEO has no members, which doesn't prevent it from claiming to be a “civil society organization”. Let's be clear: it's an enterprise in the field of communication and influence, in short, lobbying.
Its 2023 budget neared 1.2 million euros, with a staff of 15, representing 5.5 full-time equivalents, with no one accredited to the European Parliament.
The largest donors are foundations: Adessium Foundation, Energy Transition Fund, Open Society Foundation, Polden Puckham Charity Fund, (these four donated over 100,000 euros each), etc.
The Transparency Register factsheet is also a sort of playbook on the transparency practices that lobbyists ought to apply, somewhat in line with its declared mission to monitor and admonish lobbyists.
Well, some of them only: our little finger tells us that some of the CEO-letter co-signatory organizations vying for the hall of fame are not registered. Others include the usual crowd: Friends of the Earth Europe, Pan Europe (but also Pan Germany), the German Testbiotech and the French Générations Futures.
In all, there are about two dozen groups that have signed this lobbying document.
In a nutshell...
The CEO open letter to MEPs sets up its tent:
“We, as a network of NGOs working on reducing the use and negative impacts of pesticides and genetically engineered organisms on biodiversity and human health, reach out to you with an urgent request. As you may have seen, recent revelations from a Lighthouse Reports investigation showed how Trump's administration set up a strategy to torpedo the EU Green Deal (notably the Farm to Fork Strategy) using influence and misinformation campaigns to undermine Europe's food quality. The PR firms behind this strategy were also responsible for profiling hundreds of scientists, journalists and environmental activists from all over the world, including Europe.”
MEPs: Use your Voice! (…and repeat after me)
The signatories call on MEPs to “use your voice as MEPs, to address your concerns to both the US embassy in Brussels as well as the European Commission” and, in particular to:
Call for an immediate investigation into possible breaches of European GDPR rules linked to the filing of EU citizens, etc.;
Urge the European Institutions to restart the ambitious work on the EU F2F, etc.;
“Demand transparency from both the US government and EU institutions regarding external attempts to interfere with the EU's Green Deal and Farm to Fork strategy; as well as the funding and operations of the PR firms involved, focusing on their influence on EU policies and public opinion manipulation.”
“Advocate for a legally binding transparency register, better rules against conflicts of interest for MEPs and an authority with sufficient resources and competencies to monitor and enforce compliance with the rules, to expose covert or manipulative influence on democratic processes.”
What a tall order!
With regard to the first point, CEO could not have been unaware that the accusations made by Lighthouse Reports had been expressly denied.
But why would CEO deprive itself of an argument likely to arouse conspiracy-minded MEPs? It's a good strategy for creating doubt and suspicion – in short, for lobbying.
To analyze the two last, fully quoted points is to come up against Brandolini's law: The energy required to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than that required to create it.
But, as CEO gushes on about “scientific studies on the Green Deal [that] have been paid for and instrumentalized by commercial actors in the agri-food industry”, one should wonder about the scope of the “transparency” that would be demanded “from the US government and EU institutions”. Ditto for “the funding and operations of the PR firms...”
Of course, this would not apply to operations whose central player is, for example, Lighthouse Reports...
As for the transparency register, which would be ultimately intended to “expose covert or manipulative influence on democratic processes”, that sounds like an oxymoron!
But then again, CEO and the like can afford to deviate from rationality in their lobbying. They just need to “activate” a few MEPs or one or more parliamentary groups, and the machination will be underway.
The Telephone Game
The campaign chain is quite straightforward: the initial work was undoubtedly done by Carey Gillam, passed on then to Lighthouse Reports, Le Monde followed and produced “information”, and CEO finally cherry-picked and arranged it to its liking. By the time CEO’s network of opportunists are done manipulating the messages, facts and reality will have been long gone.
What follows are three examples of where claims made from the original research have been exaggerated, embellished and adapted to fit the objectives of CEO in enraging their network of anti-industry activists. To them, the truth does not matter.
1. The ECR parliamentary group webinar
According to CEO,
“As Lighthouse/Le Monde described, a specific event on July 29 2020, jointly organised by USDA and WHWG together with the ECR parliamentary group, served as kick-off for a campaign that ultimately was instrumental in undermining the F2F Strategy by changing the narrative and political debate.”
No, this webinar was not organized by the White House Writers Group, as we saw in a previous article. It was even less organized by the USDA. This is not only preposterous, it's disproved by the article linked by CEO!
But all's good to take in a strategy of influence for certain entities...
2. The alleged USDA contract with v-Fluence
CEO also writes:
“The Lighthouse investigation reveals that in 2020, the US government awarded a contract worth up to $4.9 million to White House Writers Group and v-Fluence, as part of the US strategy to undermine the EU's Farm to Fork strategy. [...]”
In fact, the main information does not come from Lighthouse Reports, but from Carey Gillam and The New Lede, a metastasis of the US NGO, Environmental Working Group.
It is perfectly clear in her writings that the contract was only with the WHWG. But the CEO's lobbying strategy undoubtedly called for v-Fluence to be party to the contract – as in Le Monde, where the author struggled somewhat to establish an association. Here, for the CEO, it's direct!
Moreover, it was a “blanket purchase agreement” that was to be activated on demand (and was used only once, for an estimated amount of some $50,000). Stéphane Foucart had described the situation fairly accurately in Le Monde.
The CEO, however, eliminated the details, suggesting that the US government had invested – and therefore also spent – $4.9 million on dabbling operations.
The New Lede – replicating USRTK's tactics in support of predatory lawyers who want to lighten Bayer/Monsanto's pockets – has reproduced the contract. The original uses scrolling windows, but it is possible to capture the full text (the maximum 250 characters) of the contract's subject matter. It reads:
“Communications content support for US international policy objectives promoting 1) science-based regulation of agricultural products and technology inputs, 2) rules-based non-discriminatory trade, and 3) the adoption of market-friendly, pro-innovative measures]”
In a nutshell: this was not in the context of an “US strategy to undermine the EU's Farm to Fork strategy” as the CEO claims – and as Carey Gillam also, shall we say, incorrectly implied.
3. The contract with IFPRI or USAID?
Gillam must be credited with a proven talent for describing facts or events with enough ambiguity to bolster her narrative. For example:
“While the company’s early clients included Syngenta and Monsanto, it [v-Fluence] later secured government funding as part of a contract with a third party. Public spending records show the USAID contracted with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which manages a government initiative to introduce GM crops in global south countries. In turn, IFPRI paid v-Fluence a little more than $400,000 from roughly 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting critics of 'modern agriculture approaches' in Africa and Asia.”
In short: the USDA funded IFPRI and if the narrative is to be believed with strings attached, for the execution of a specific program, IFPRI called on v-Fluence... and, bingo ! v-Fluence has “secured government funding”. But an attentive reader will easily recognize the trick.
There is, in fact, absolutely nothing abnormal in this chain of events.
Stéphane Foucart is also an expert in fiddling:
“[...] It [IFPRI] subcontracted influence missions to v-Fluence between 2013 and 2019. In total, according to our information, v-Fluence received just over $400,000 in American public money. When questioned, Mr. Byrne denied any contract with USAID.”
The trick here is: “American public money”.
Lighthouse Reports tells a different story: the funding is direct!
“Our investigation reveals that the US government funded v-Fluence as part of its program to promote GMOs in Africa and Asia. Between roughly 2013 and 2019, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) channelled over $400,000 to v-Fluence for services including “enhanced monitoring” of critics of “modern agriculture approaches” – and to build Bonus Eventus.”
And happens to reality by the time it got to the manipulative objectives of CEO?
“The findings are part of a wider investigation which found that between 2013 and 2019, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) channelled over $400,000 to v-Fluence for the purpose of "stakeholder tracking" of industrial agriculture critics. As part of this "monitoring", v-Fluence created a private social network called Bonus Eventus, which profiled more than 500 individuals, including scientists, UN human rights experts, environmentalists, and journalists, as well as over 3,000 organisations.”
What is the intended implication of their choice of the word: “channelled”? Common sense suggests a covert and irregular operation. And the object of the mission becomes, here too, legally questionable.
If lobbying is an art, CEO is a struggling artist with no one buying their creations.
This is an English translation of an article published on the French blogsite: “Agriculture, alimentation, santé publique... soyons rationnels”. The article was written by the editor, André Heitz, under his nom de plume: Wackes Seppi. André is a retired agronomist and a former international civil servant for the United Nations system. For those incapable of thinking on the basis of information: he is not working for any chemical or pesticide companies.
Editor’s note on André’s work:
The manufactured scandal that has engulfed v-Fluence and its Bonus-Eventus network is a series of lies and feigned outrage designed to damage the small media monitoring consultancy. They are funded by anti-industry foundations like the Oak Foundation and the Agroecology Fund (more than $800,000 for the first year), along with US tort law firms suing Syngenta who broke all ethical conduct rules by providing documents to the well-financed activist network who have been posing as journalists to feed disinformation into the agri-food debate. Their goal, relentlessly executed, is to put the small news information service out of business, and most of the groups and individuals who have benefitted from v-Fluence’s excellent issue monitoring services are now keeping their heads down.
I salute and support André Heitz for bravely standing up to these activists (who have sued him in the past) to show the lies, manipulation and objectives of these malicious interest groups. André is one of the few people steadfastly speaking for facts and respect in this disgusting campaign.
Today we are seeing a number of science communicators speaking out against the appointment of RFK Jr to head the US Department of Health and Human Services. Where were these same people when the “Lighthouse Gang” of activist networks were preparing the ground of public outrage and distrust that could 'mainstream’ a radical conspiracy theorist like RFK? They have blindly and belatedly attacked the effect and ignored the cause. Thank you André for standing up and shining a light on the architects behind this activist travesty.
 |
|