Poisoning Leaves Cursed Betrayal

Industrial Ag threatens the small farmer and society as
never before. Communities are fighting back.

Update II: See also the Petition to EPA to stop Dow from Poisoning our Children with Chlorpyrifos, pesticides used by Big Ag.

Updated - Vietnam War combat veterans—aware of reporting on the vectoring of pathogens and pollutants into Wisconsin society by industrialized 'farming'—advise the current horror inflicted in southeast Asia on Vietnamese victims by unexploded American ordnance (UXO) and Agent Orange should inform public policy, pointing to recent pieces on the topic by George Black, The Nation; see also Haberman, NYT).

Agent Orange from the 1960s still deforming and killing people? Yes, this is still happening in 2015, the magnitude of the horror to which those American veterans who still live in Vietnam attest.

Agent Orange and other defoliants—generally regarded as among the most most toxic molecules ever synthesized by human beings—are extreme examples of mass poisoning, intended to destroy the verdant Eco-system of southeast Asia to facilitate killing southeast Asians held in disfavor of the U.S. government during the Vietnam War.

Dow and Monsanto which manufactured the weapons of Operation Ranch Hand (1961-71) are imprecations to many Vietnam-era veterans, one reason why Republicans in the Bush-Cheney administration targeted and even imprisoned Vietnam-era veterans who "tenaciously [pursued] a claim for [disability] benefits" sustained during their service to our country. (Horton, Harper's Magazine) That administration had to discourage Vietnam veterans from pretending to negative health consequences sustained from the war.

Many veterans with whom I have spoken place Karl Rove behind some of these criminal prosecutions, an unconfirmed fact, but not much happened during the Bush-Cheney administration without the chickenhawk Rove's go-ahead.

You don't have to look too far these days to find a Vietnam War veteran exposed to Agent Orange and other predictable effects of the Vietnam War, the observant might find such men at a community hospice.

Whether American war planners intended to kill, deform and traumatize Americans and Vietnamese or whether killing, deforming and traumatizing are merely predictable consequential side effects of the war, to victims of Agent Orange it doesn't matter.

Dow Chemical Company and Monsanto Company remain today, bigger than ever, business allies with American Big Ag.

Big Ag

This is fitting as Big Ag engages in its own we-didn't-know-the-consequences-our-motives-are-benign PR campaign against local communities such as Bayfield County and the town of Saratoga in Wisconsin. Other examples of Big Ag PR in Wisconsin are legion in America's Dairyland.

Big Ag using antimicrobials on an industrial scale (John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future) in the production of milk for example causes the "evolution and proliferation of antimicrobial-resistant strains of bacteria."

This is one reason why politicians should become serious students of biological evolution—especially the governor of America's Dairyland, Scott Walker—as Big Ag's new model of industrial agriculture represents a case study in which MRSA (Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and other pathogens are vectored into human society as the CDC and health surveillance agencies routinely see human-enhanced evolution of pathogens in action.

As victims of MRSA, Ecoli, and other pathogens proliferate, should Blue Baby syndrome (aka methemoglobinemia now prevalent in Yakima Valley in Washington state, caused by too many nitrates in surface waters and aquifers) come to Wisconsin, the local CAFO operating as LLC business entities will become as obscene to Wisconsin citizens as Dow and Monsanto are to Vietnam combat veterans—like the amiable bunch of crazy bastards of an old unit in Marine Force Recon who operated in southeast Asia and did many things, some of which were legal under international law.

As Wayne Griffiths of Bayfield County (Wisconsin) writes: "As a Vietnam-era military medic I think the we should consider the lessons from Vietnam. In particular I am concerned about the use of chemicals in an environment and the long term health problems they can cause for generations to come. We need to consider what we do today is inherited by future generations."