Re: the politics of unreasonable risks

["Jon Campbell" <jon@cqs.com>]

the politics of Monsanto is more than pesticides. That company shares with
Dow the major responsibility of poisoning the earth by selling and promoting
organochlorine chemistry and the products that come from it: 2.4-D, 2,4,5-T
(and its Agent Orange mixture), PCBs, trichlorophenol base,
pentachlorophenol - the chemicals that started the dioxin poisoning of the
biosphere. The GMO corn and cotton that emits BT toxin will likely eliminate
this last defense of organic argriculture. The company seems to control the
Agriculture Dept, which has made it a crime to identify GMO products here,
and the US Export Agency, which fights whole governments abroad to keep the
GMO label off Monsanto seeds and grain. The attitude of the company toward
the earth and its inhabitants seems to be only aptly described as
psychopathic: without remorse or emotional connection to humanity, a sense
of entitlement to do whatever it pleases, no matter how many people it
hurts, and for which the common good is an inconvenient and puzzling
abstraction (from Robert Hare, in the Harvard Mental Health Letter. Also see
his book, Without Remorse, published in 1995).

Jon Campbell
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Snow <sksnow@worldnet.att.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list DIOXIN-L <dioxin-l@essential.org>
Date: Monday, September 07, 1998 4:16 AM
Subject: the politics of unreasonable risks


>Some time back, there was a discussion about Monsanto and the influence
>they've wielded in both Congress and the White House.  Initially, their
>influence unreasonably risked the health of the planet with PCBs.  The
>PCBs, unfortunately, are still around yet now this unreasonable risk
>have spread to pesticides and genetically modified organisms that resist
>yet more herbicides and other pesticides.  In fact, some crops have been
>registered to the USEPA as pesticides, themselves. Monsanto has bought
>out major seed companies in North America and are spreading poisons
>everywhere for profit, without ethical morals.
>
>However, thanks to the Center for Public Integrity in their latest
>report, UNREASONABLE RISK..THE POLITICS OF PESTICIDES (copyright, 1998),
>I am better able to understand why whatever Monsanto wants, Monsanto
>gets.  After all, their former [?] employees are everywhere --as U.S.
>Representatives and U.S. Senators or working staff for ''honorable''
>elected Congressmen/women, Monsanto staff are or have been in various
>government positions where decisions are made that assist their
>corporate into lucrative government contracts; one even finds them in
>White House employment.  But what has been most disappointing to me
>includes friends of the environment like a former Democratic Congressman
>from Connecticut  that now appears to work or has worked for Monsanto.
>Is there no end in sight for the stench of toxic money?  This is not a
>gamble for sex with a White House intern, but an ''unreasonable risk''
>that affects the lives and health of everyone, everywhere.  It is the
>''politics of pesticides''.
>
>I urge you to read this excellent investigative report which is in PDF
>format at http://www.publicintegrity.org/unreasonable_risk.html .
>
>There is something seriously wrong with the ethics and misnamed morality
>in the U.S. government, and it has nothing to do with sexual
>indiscretions.
>
>Susan Snow
>