Revolt Against the Pesticide Empire

by Jon Rappoport

This is a boycott against the eight biggest pesticide companies in the world, but it is much more than that. It's a boycott against THE POWER and against a way of life represented by all the gigantic multinational corporations, which every day extend their control over the planet. By the time you finish reading this material you'll realize how destructive their power is, in detail. You'll understand more clearly why these simple stark things need to be done:

1. stop buying these corporations' products;
2. don't buy their stock on whatever exchanges they're traded;
3. demand that others including institutions sell their stock in these companies;
4. don't work for these corporations;
5. find a way to personally pass on the word.

This is definitely a PASS IT ON thing.

The eight corporations to be boycotted are:

• Dow
• Du Pont
• Monsanto
• Imperial Chemical Industries
• Novartis
• Rhone Poulenc
• Bayer
• Hoechst

There is one overriding reason for going after these eight corporations. They are all forwarding genetic projects to engineer food seeds so that our food supply in the fields will accept much higher doses of herbicides without curling up and dying. This will drench both the soil and our bodies with corporate toxic chemicals and improve their profit statements.

Of course, these mega-companies are up to their eyeballs in poisons. Poisons, you might say, are their life.

These corporations and others like them stand for control of the planet, as around us the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Huge multinationals, of course blur with governments, thereby availing themselves of important political connections, intelligence agencies, military links.

Despite protestations to the contrary, multinationals that destroy the world's air, water, soil, trees and human/animal health don't consider life the bottom line. Money and power are always the bottom line. Toxic clean-ups and smokestack filters notwithstanding.

We are dealing with monopolies. A monopoly will say or do anything to dominate its chosen sphere. You throw out a monopoly by doing two things:

1. boycotting the hell out of it as described above;
2. and then developing real alternatives for their toxic products.

So, yes, the worldwide revolution in organic growing of food is a tremendous alternative to pesticide mongers, but not without a powerful, loud and ongoing boycott. These companies, if forced into lower production of pesticides, will try ANYTHING to win. Hell, they'll sell the idea that tons of their organophosphates should be released into outer space to kill floating viruses! And you know what? Millions of brain-dead TV-watchers would buy in.
If you think I'm exaggerating in estimating how far multinationals will go in trying to peddle their toxins, meditate on the fact that the completely discredited and horrible drug, Thalidomide, a sedative that caused massive deformation in babies, is now being tested on people with AIDS.
Dow and Monsanto would still be selling their stocks of Agent Orange left over from the Vietnam War if enough people hadn't kept up a thunder of protest about dioxin, the molecule this defoliant contained which causes cancer, birth defects and immune suppression, and is called by scientists the most poisonous small molecule on the planet.
So the answer to a monopoly is: boycott it and lay down real alternatives to the needs it pretends to fill.



The way things look, unless we launch a major effort our human societies in the 21st Century are going to disappear up their own anuses. If that's too graphic for you, take a look some time at Rocky Flats, Colorado, world center for poisonous leaking chemicals; or look at a baby deformed by these chemicals. That's what graphic really is. Steady state politeness and niceness are not going to carry the day. Don't knuckle under. Don't believe liars. Don't march off the cliff. Boycott!

Dow

Number two in chemical sales in the U.S. Employees: 58,000. Sales: $20 billion. Headquarters: Midland, Michigan, U.S.
Dow, the manufacturer of Napalm and Agent Orange during Vietnam War, and now the target of a billion dollars worth of lawsuits over their highly destructive silicone breast implants, is partners with the drug firm Ely Lilly in Dow Elanco, a spin-off company that is the largest producer of insecticides and fungicides in the U.S.
Dow must have a magnetic attraction for severe defoliants. Having distanced itself from Agent Orange -- its partner Lilly now makes Tebuthiuron, an herbicide that kills soil so that no plants can grow on it in the future. Sounds like a weapon of war.
Of course Dow also tries to distance itself from dioxin (contained in its Vietnam era Agent Orange), but Greenpeace reports that hugely produced chlorine based Dow products -- pesticides, solvents and PVC plastics -- are the single largest source in the world of dioxin today.
Dow owns Marion Merrell Dow (MMD), a major pharmaceutical house. Like all drug companies, whether you know it or not, the commercial output of MMD is chillingly toxic. Let's start there.

Examples:

• MMD's vaginal suppository AVC cream is used to treat Candida albicans. The PDR states that there is no data available on the long term potential of AVR for causing cancer or birth defects, but "deaths associated with administration of oral sulfonamides (such as AVC) have reportedly occurred form hypersensitivity reactions, agranulocytosis, aplastic anemia and other blood discrasias." . . . Comforting.
• Bentyl, Dow's drug for irritable bowel syndrome, also has in the PDR listing "no known data" for long term potential carcinogenicity or birth defects, but "psychosis has been reported in sensitive individuals." There are also, the PDR says, reports of deaths from respiratory collapse.
• Cardizem, the Dow drug for hypertension and angina, carries the PDR caution: "Worsening of congestive heart failure has been reported in patients with preexisting impairment of ventricular function."

Nothing could prepare a sane person for the PDR's description of Dow's Clomid, a drug that attempts to produce ovulatory stimulation so that pregnancy can occur in women for whom that would otherwise be unlikely.
Here is a partial list of Clomid's post-marketing adverse effects:

• seizure
• stroke
• psychosis
• cataracts
• posterior vitreous detachment
• arrhythmia
• tachycardia
• hepatitis
• liver and breast and pituitary and ovarian and kidney and tongue and bladder cancer
• brain abscess
• tubal pregnancy
• uterine hemorrhage
• ovarian hemorrhage

In the babies born to the mothers taking Clomid, there have occurred:

• neuroectodermal tumor
• thyroid tumor
• leukemia
• abnormal bone development including skeletal malformations of the skull, face, nasal passages, jaw, hand, limb and foot joints
• malformations of the anus, eye, lens, ear, lung, heart and genitalia
• dwarfism
• deafness
• mental retardation
• chromosomal disorders
• neural tube defects

Lorelco, Dow's drug aimed at lowering cholesterol, has this ominous PDR caution: females should be warned not to become pregnant for at least six months after discontinuing Lorelco. Lorelco's adverse effects?

• Gastrointestinal bleeding
• vomiting
• low hemoglobin
• fetid sweat
• impotency
• anorexia
• diminished sense of taste and smell.

Dow makes Norpramin, an antidepressant. The PDR states: "It is important that this drug be dispensed in the least possible quantities to depressed outpatients since suicide has been accomplished with this class of drug."
Some of the effects of Norpramin are:

• both elevating and lowering of blood sugar levels
• heart block, myocardial infarction, stroke
• sudden death
• hallucinations, delusions
• tremors, ataxia, peripheral neuropathy, seizures
• dilation of urinary tract
• bone marrow depression
• vomiting, black tongue, hepatitis
• impotence, painful ejaculation, testicular swelling
• weight gain or loss.

(Note: In these drug summaries I don't even bother to comment about the uniform unworkability of the drugs on the causes of the illnesses for which they are prescribed nor will I comment on a further danger: the effects of combining several drugs at once. Nor on the fact that OTHER non-toxic remedies and approaches to health would eliminate the need for these drugs and their poisonous effects.)
Dow makes Rifadin, a "semi-synthetic" antibiotic for the treatment of tuberculosis. The PDR comments, "Rifadin has been shown to produce liver dysfunction. Fatalities associated with jaundice have occurred in patients with (previous) liver disease." The PDR further issues a bizarre warning -- "Rifadin can cause the urine, feces, saliva, sputum, sweat, and tears to turn red-orange. "Permanent discoloration of soft contact lenses may occur."
The suggested Rifadin dosage for people with TB is 600mg a day for six to nine months. Yet the PDR gives this warning: "High doses of Rifadin greater than 600mg given once or twice a week have resulted in high incidence of adverse reactions, including leukopenia (abnormal decrease in white blood corpuscles), thrombocytopenia (abnormal decrease in blood platelets), acute hemolytic anemia, shock, renal failure."
Among Rifadin's other adverse effects are anorexia, vomiting and menstrual disturbances.