EPA Official Ousted While Fighting Dow Chemical
SAGINAW, Mich - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.
On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade’s interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest office, based in Chicago.
Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.
The call came as the Tribune was preparing to publish a story about the dioxin issue and Gade’s crusade.
Jonathan Shradar, an EPA spokesman in Washington, said Gade has been placed on administrative leave until June 1. He declined further comment, saying the agency does not publicly discuss personnel matters.
Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. The company dumped the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.
Many local residents see Dow as a lifeline in region plagued by plant closings and layoffs. But all along the two wide streams that cut through this old industrial town, signs warn people to keep off dioxin-contaminated riverbanks and to avoid eating fish pulled from the fast-moving waters. Officials have taken the swings down in one riverside park to discourage kids from playing there. Men in rubber boots and thick gloves occasionally knock on doors, asking residents whether they can dig up a little soil in the yard.
Gade, appointed by President Bush as regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters.
She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S.
Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, but in April Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.
On Thursday, Gade said of her resignation: “There’s no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I’m proud of what we did.”
Dioxin, measured in trillionths of a gram because it is so toxic, was a manufacturing byproduct of the herbicide Agent Orange and other chlorinated chemicals. Company documents show Dow knew by the mid-1960s that it could make people sick or even kill them. Citing years of independent studies, the EPA says dioxin causes cancer and disrupts the immune and reproductive systems, even at very low levels.
Concerns about dioxin contamination were behind two of the most infamous environmental disasters in U.S. history: the evacuations of the Love Canal neighborhood in upstate New York and the entire town of Times Beach, Mo.
But in the Saginaw area, cleanup remains stalled, mainly because Dow asserts the contamination does not threaten people or wildlife.
“There is all of this mystique about dioxin,” said John Musser, a Dow spokesman. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean there is an imminent health threat.”
Dow says it has agreed in principle to restore polluted areas but is contesting how it should be done-which critics view as more stalling.
“Denial and delay has been part of Dow’s game plan for years,” said Michelle Hurd Riddick, a Saginaw nurse and member of the Lone Tree Council, a local environmental group. “They still haven’t delivered.”
Dow was forced to stop releasing dioxin into waterways in the mid-1980s. But when high levels of dioxin were found in fish from Saginaw Bay around the same time, Dow repeatedly claimed it wasn’t responsible, saying the chemical had settled into the water from air pollution caused by forest fires and wood-burning fireplaces.
Dow and Michigan officials took until 2003 to negotiate legal guidelines for a comprehensive cleanup. The company later paid to scour the interiors of more than 300 homes and spread wood chips outside to reduce exposure to contaminated soil. At the same time, Dow’s political allies tried to relax the state’s dioxin standards.
More recently, Dow financed a University of Michigan study that the company and its supporters say shows dioxin in soil and sediment has little to do with levels of the chemical in people. The EPA cautions the study hasn’t been peer-reviewed and appears to underestimate health risks.
“Dow has powerful sway in that area and in the state as a whole,” said Dave Dempsey, a former Michigan activist who was environment adviser in the 1980s to then-Gov. James Blanchard. “But with all of the information out there about dioxin, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to avoid doing something.”
At the center of the latest dispute was Gade, who as a corporate attorney had represented big companies like Dow against environmental regulators. Her aggressive action against Dow surprised the company, local activists and her Washington bosses. But she still won high marks from EPA officials during her last performance evaluation.
The steps Gade took were influenced in part by her experience as an EPA staffer during the early 1980s, when the agency’s top official in Washington was forced to resign after he allowed Dow to censor an EPA study documenting dioxin’s dangers.
“We have a responsibility to make sure people are living in a healthy and safe environment,” Gade said. “This problem has been out there for more than 30 years, and it’s unconscionable that action hasn’t been taken.”
“We know Dow is responsible,” said Ralph Dollhopf, associate director of the EPA’s regional Superfund office. “The question now is when something will finally be done about it.”
In Saginaw, some are reluctant to question one of the area’s biggest employers and benefactors. They tout Dow’s 3,100 manufacturing jobs and its donations to community and arts groups, including its sponsorship of a struggling civic arena, now known as the Dow Event Center.
Bob VanDeventer, president of the Saginaw County Chamber of Commerce, said local leaders are trying to fight the perception that dioxin makes the area unsafe. He argued “not one illness” can be attributed to dioxin and insisted the only way someone could be exposed to dioxin is if they “eat the dirt.”
“Michigan is in the tank economically already,” VanDeventer said. “For us, this situation certainly creates more uncertainty as long as it remains unresolved.”
Others who were drawn to living along the picturesque Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers fear the contamination will make it impossible to sell their homes or will get them sick.
For more than 40 years, Lloyd and Joy Cooper have lived in a cottage near where the tree-lined rivers meet. Contractors for the EPA and Dow have tested their yard at least four times in two years.
In February Dow told federal regulators they had found dioxin levels of 5,900 parts per trillion in the Collins’ neighborhood, above the federal cleanup standard of 1,000 parts per trillion. Michigan’s far more stringent limit is 90 parts per trillion.
“It gets pretty frustrating,” said Lloyd Cooper, a retired contractor. “It seems like they’re dragging this out as long as they can. If they’re going to do something, do it and get it over with for good.”
Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
Governing by intimidation —
And it’s systemic now throughout our system of government —
I got a friend who is still suffering with cancers from agent orange in Nam.
It took a long time for Pete Seeger’s Clearwater group and the River Keepers to clean up the Hudson…You gotta get tough with the corporations to get it done…. Bush of course will do nothing. Only 8 more months left, folks.
Gee, it looked like a safe appointment - a corporate attorney defending polluters. So what happened? She grew a conscience?
Unlike Clinton. I read that one of her first cases as an attorney was to cross examine a 12 year old rape victim. I’ll bet she was good at that. She’s good at sounding like she’s on your side while she’s cutting your legs off. Like this gas tax holiday shell game. I’m wondering if the public is falling for it. Obama is explaining why they shouldn’t. I don’t know if he’s getting through, everyone in the propaganda machine would much rather talk about Wright.
I’ve been boycotting Dow for 40 years over napalm. Dow purchased Union Carbide in Bhopal and still refuses to clean up the mess. That’s one thing they can be counted on, poisoning the place and absconding with the money.
We aren’t going to be able to take our country back from these murderous crooks in one election, they have the power and almost all of our money and they’re going to hang on tight. But Barack Obama, by denouncing the gas tax holiday, has shown he will take a politically unpopular position to do the right thing, and that is who we need to get started. Panderers have no intention of changing the status quo, just providing bromides to manage public fury.
kathyodat
Residents and workers exposed to dioxin from the Paritutu chemicals’ factory in New Plymouth will be able to apply for a state-funded annual health check from July.
The Ministry of Health announced details of the $750,000-a-year scheme in the city last night - but a community group dismissed it as of little value.
Ivon Watkins-Dow, now called Dow AgroSciences, produced the herbicide 2,4,5-T in Paritutu from 1962 to 1988.
Long-term residents who lived near the plant in those years and former plant workers have elevated levels of the dioxin TCDD in their blood.
Dioxins are linked to a range of cancers including leukaemia. There is evidence of links to prostate cancer, type 2 diabetes, spina bifida in the offspring of those exposed, and other diseases.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=294&objectid=10507009
“There is all of this mystique about dioxin,” said John Musser, a Dow spokesman. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean there is an imminent health threat.”
Cripes, that’s like saying just because cheney/bush are still there, there’s no imminent threat that they’ll attack Iraq or continue spying on us or continue to destroy our environment or continue to fix elections or…
Bob VanDeventer, president of the Saginaw County Chamber of Commerce, said local leaders are trying to fight the perception that dioxin makes the area unsafe. He argued “not one illness” can be attributed to dioxin and insisted the only way someone could be exposed to dioxin is if they “eat the dirt.”
Anyone who has kids know they “eat dirt”
Tell Viktor Yushenkov dioxin is not dangerous. Hell, assassins are using it as a poison.
What is so criminal about every one of these disasters, recalls, etc, is that for a few lousy bucks of prevention up front, every leaky poison tank, every e. coli virus, every ounce of lead in paint, every exploding gas tank, etc could have been prevented. For a few less dollars of almighty profit at the outset, billions in lost lives, destroyed environment, legal fees, government action, etc, could have been saved.
This country and its stillborn dream of true Democracy has been destroyed by Reagan unregulated capitalism. No “elected” officials untainted by its influence are left to protect the rights of Americans and the safety of the world. The shortsightedness of “the market” will be the death of biosystem earth and thus the death of us all. The irony is that the filthrich’s money won’t save them or their kids - they are all going down with us.
“Many local residents see Dow as a lifeline…”, I normally laugh at irony but this one just makes me depressed. There’s got to be a better way for the folks in Saginaw to make a living other than creating demand for the cancer-treatment industry.
Typical Bush administration move: Fire anyone who tells you something you don’t want to hear. My praise and admiration go out to Mary Gade.
Anyone still think that the Government represents the people?
Yes Dow, it is in the dirt and the water that goes through the dirt and ends up in the rivers and fish and our water and bodies.
Yes Dow, tell kids “don’t eat the dirt and don’t drink the water or eat the fish”.
That’s what happened to the Hudson River…we got proof now… ask Joe Kennedy.
Of course Dow’s kids don’t live anywhere near their polluted plants.
THOSE TV ADDS THAT SAY..”IF YOU WERE EXPOSED TO (BLANK) AND ARE SUFFERING FROM (BLANK) PLEASE CALL THE LAW OFFICES OF JOHN, PAUL AND RINGO..YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO A SETTLEMENT..” ETC..YOU KNOW THE ONES?
WELL..AT THIS POINT I CAN SEE THE SAME THING HAPPENING IN A FEW YEARS WITH THE BUSH DOCTRINE…
“WERE YOU UNFAIRLY “FIRED” FOR DOING YOUR JOB BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION? IF SO YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO..” ETC..
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DEALT THIS KIND OF TREATMENT BY THIS ADMINISTRATION? HOW MANY? I AM CONFIDENT WE KNOW OF ONLY A HANDFULL..THE US ATTORNEYS, THIS POOR BASTARD..AND A FEW OTHERS LIKE HIM..I BELIEVE THEIR ARE POTENTIALLY…DOZENS..HUNDRED…MAYBE..GULP! MORE THAN THAT..THE BUSH DOCTRINE IS ALMOST..ALOMST “OPEN” ABOUT THE ESSENTIAL RULE THEY HAVE..”PLAY BALL WITH OUR CORPORATE MASTERS AND PARTNERS..OR ELSE” PERIOD!..
WELL..MAYBE..JUST MAYBE..THEY WILL ALL GET TOGETHER AND DO A CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT..HEY..IDEA:
WOULDN’T THAT BE A GREAT WAY TO INFORM THE PUBLIC ABOUT THIS FIASCO? TO SEND OUT ONE OF THOSE “MAILERS” OR PUT ADDS IN MAGAZINES ADVERTISING AND INFORMING THE PUBLIC OF THEIR “RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE” IF THEY IN FACT ARE ONE OF THOSE “LET GO” BY THE BUSH REGIME…YOWSA! THAT IS A GOOD IDEA…THAT IS WORTHY OF DER KARL…A MAILER…ADDS..THAT CLEARLY STATE THE “ISSUE” MAKING THE PUBLIC AWARE OF ONE OF THE MORE HEINOUS(SIC?) ADVENTURES OF DER JUNIOR AND HIS THUG-RUNTS…YEAH..THAT COULD WORK..WISH I HAD THE BREAD..I’D DO IT TOMARROW…
This is the same company which was responsible for the Bhopal tragedy. They have no shame, I am not sure if they even accepted responsibility or even paid compensation for the many victims of this awful tragedy.
If you display any sign of integrity as a Federal Government employee, be prepared to resign or get fired!
Saginaw bay and all the streams in the area are poluted from Dow. Everybody knows it. To demand a clean-up from Dow would be the right thing to do.
I guess we see how that went.
Bush is scum!!!!
He’s looking forward to the ‘rapture’. Hopefully for him it’ll come soon. Unfortunatly for the rest of us, we’re stuck with his legacy and incompetence.
And what effect does this have on others who would fight the good fight? Much like the state AG’s that Rove canned if they don’t tow the Bush line! Call your Rep. & Senator …Impeach NOW!
Thanks Mary Gade for standing up and also for telling the truth about why you left the job. It is depressing though, because others will be intimidated and it is hard to find a job these days. The only way to win is if many many tell the truth and refuse to go along with coverups.
The longshore action gives me some hope that a rebellion could be out there somewhere.
Like kathyodat I have been boycotting Dow household products for 40+ years. Not that it is an organized boycott, it just makes me sick to my stomach to see the name and I won’t let it into the house. Similar with Union Carbide.
OUR SO CALLED LEADERS,AND OUR GOVERNMENT,ARE EMBARRASSMENTS,WE NEED TO FIGHT OUR GOVERNMENT NOW, OR IT WILL BE TO LATE. THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT THE BUCK,NOT THE PEOPLE. THIS IS HOW THE BUSHIES WORK, WAKE UP AMERICA, ITS TIME TO TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK. JOIN WE THE PEOPLE.
Dow is great company and has invented and improved a lot of wonderful chemicals, materials and products. Why is it that corporations always hand mistakes over first to the schmoozers, then the legal department and finally the string pullers? As always, the bean counters and “risk managers” are in charge.
Why not just apologize and clean up the mess? The stockholders of Dow need to tell the board they want Midland, MI cleaned up.
As stated above, only 8 more months!
Dow Chemical (and Dow Corning) just up the road in Midland, Michigan from where I live have beem striving hard to be model corporate citizens for the locals ever since environmental activist groups like the Lone Tree Council, and great people like Michele Hurd Riddick - quoted in this Chicago Tribune article - focused in on the dioxin contamination/water quality issue.
Midland itself is a rather upscale, moderate Republican company town, and damn proud of it. Unlike many multi-national corporate giants, Dow has a well earned reputation for philanthropic generosity within its base community - parks, gardens, libraries, a lovely art and performing arts center, very good public schools.
Nobody bites the hand that feeds them. And most Midlanders are not inclined to even go for a genteel nibble.
Us locals fifteen miles downstream from the sprawling Midland industrial complex suspect that Dow’s recent sponsorship of Saginaw’s financially ailing civic center was largely outreach public relations over the dioxin controversy, but we’ll gladly accept the financial trickle down, regardless of secondary motivation. At the same time the Dow logo appeared on the renamed and rennovated Dow Event Center, Dow also funded a major upgrade of the food bank and soup kitchen facility in the poorest part of the city’s struggling east side.
Having given credit where credit is due, here’s a few pieces of Dow background history to also keep in mind.
Art Neumann, a patriarch founder of national Trout Unlimited, can still be enticed to a boiling rage when he retells an anecdote from his childhood about the day one of Dow’s discharge dams burst, and dramatically poisoned every brown trout and nearly every living asquatic creature downstream in the Saginaw River overnight. This was long before the days of EPA and the Clean Water or Environmental Protection acts. Absolutely nothing was done. The Tittabawassee/Saginaw stream trout fishery never revived.
During the 1960’s, Dow developed and mass produced Agent Orange and napalm for use in Vietnam. When protestors picketed outside the facility, Dow Security took names. The company fired scores of employees, union be damned. The local jingle was “They got the gate in ‘68.”
In the 1970’s, Dow, Bechtel, and Consumers Power created a consortium to construct a nuclear plant in the watershed just a few miles from Lake Huron. There were massive demonstrations. Michael Moore once mooned a TV crew covering one of the protests long before he was famous. Eventually, cost overruns, public opposition, and concerns about things like Chernobyl killed the nuke plant project, and the whole mess ended up in bitter, three-sided litigation among the trio of big time, big money corporate partners.
In the 80’s, Greenpeace came through the Great Lakes and staged some great nonviolent protest events. Someone mysteriously painted “Dow” on the bow of Greenpeace’s vessel one night while it was docked in Bay City - an act of graffiti/free speech that would have been sort of funny but for the fact that the Michigan prank happened on the very same day that French intelligence black ops boys blew up the Rainbow Warrior on the other side of the globe in New Zealand.
A half dozen Greenpeace people put on wet suits and gear, and were dropped into the river carrying large red Stop Sign shaped plugs while the TV crews recorded it all. The goal was to plug up Dow’s effluent pipe outlets embedded in the river bottom. Dow security and the local constabulary swooped in, and arrests were made.
Several months later, the Greenpeace activists went on trial for criminal trespassing on private property - Dow’s pipe. Just as happens in many peace protest cases, the Judge ruled that the defense of necessity was inadmissible in evidence. The jury - made up almost entirely of employees, relatives, or friends of Dow employees - found the Greenpeace protestors not guilty anyway. The water was the color of coffee with dream. You saw the plugs go under the surface and never come up. But you never actually saw anybody make contact with Dow’s pipe underneath the water. Reasonable doubt. Not guilty.
Once upon a time, Saginaw Bay was a world class fishery (both sport and commercial) for yellow perch, walleye, and even lake trout. Today, there is a big winter ice fishing festival called Shiver on the River in Saginaw, with cash awards for the biggest walleye caught. But you should not eat those fish caught spawning just downstream from Dow. The scope and phraseology of the riverside signs or printed health advisories about fish consumption have become routine battlefields of regulatory guerilla warfare.
And speaking of public health, statistics for comparative study purposes about the incidence of various types of cancers in the Midland, Michigan area are as spooky as they are controversial.
In any event, I’m glad that the Chicago Tribune and Common Dreams has focused some attention on the battle over water quality and dioxin contamination of the Saginaw Bay watershed. Needless to say, all of the local reporting is way too fair and balanced.
Dow does indeed let you do great things, just like their marketing team says. Plastics and pesticides, napalm and nylon. And never forget that it was Dow Corning that also gave America one other great, enduring icon of modern consumer culture - the silicon breast implant.
Bill from Saginaw
Many local residents see Dow as a lifeline in region plagued by plant closings and layoffs
Viewing Dow as an economic lifeline is a capitalholic hangover. The hangover will go away and you won’t have any more hangovers when you finally kick the capitalholic habit. Your families should be relieved.
william street: Dow has a well earned reputation for philanthropic generosity
The people don’t need capitalist “philanthropy”. The people are much better off WITHOUT it. The people are best off I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T.
All industrial processes should be closed cycle, meaning nothing escapes to the environment. This places a huge limit on the potential volume of production. But this limit is exactly what we need, not only to eliminate the destruction, but to limit resource plunder, and limit the people’s dependency, and limit power concentration/abuse.
The size of enterprises should be limited, to spread the economic/political power wider to where it belongs - to all the people. Get to work!!
Kick out the corrupt politicians and nationalize out-of-control corporations like Dow and Monsanto, and convert them into agencies for the public good. Do the same for the oil industry, Halliburton, etc.
Interesting stories - Bill from Saginaw.
I know from experience that within any company there are some who want to do a good job for the community as well as the company. People who work for companies like Dow, especially people in management, need to find a way to push for transparency and responsibility. One thing that would give them some ammo is the prospect of devastating lawsuits.
(I know some of us want to crush the capitalist state, but this is just for the meanwhile.)
I think Edwards as Attorney General might do a good job.
Let’s not be so stupid to assume the government works for us. Like Arundhati Roy told us in her speech at the Riverside Church, capital has long since discovered how to buy the tools and the accouterments of democracy. It is over, boys and girls. We can sit here and pontificate all we want and nothing will change. It has been said that power gives nothing without a demand. How about we DEMAND! How about we get our asses into the streets??
I’ve called for a boycott of Exxon and have gotten only derision. Fine. So tell me, then, exactly HOW will we take back this country?? Jesus H. Christ, I am ashamed to be a part of this wimpy half-semi left wing bullcrap! If only we had the balls of the right!! Let’s DO something!!!!!
Boycott EXXON!! Go out on strike!! Do something….
anyway, here’s Arundhati Roy’s speech at the Riverside church. I cried with anger…
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0518-01.htm
“Many local residents see Dow as a lifeline in region plagued by plant closings and layoffs. But all along the two wide streams that cut through this old industrial town, signs warn people to keep off dioxin-contaminated riverbanks and to avoid eating fish pulled from the fast-moving waters. Officials have taken the swings down in one riverside park to discourage kids from playing there. Men in rubber boots and thick gloves occasionally knock on doors, asking residents whether they can dig up a little soil in the yard.”
It will always be this way as long as people put the health of their jobs before the health of their children. If the people demanded a clean-up, it would be different. It always comes back to the people.
Darius Q Paquette, you are so correct, we need new blood in the leadership of this country
the weaklings have taken over, and we have
been sold out by the Clintonistas and the Bushees..try me at umt@mainester.net
We need another Boston Tea Party, where are the rebels?
Well, they scoured their walls and put out wood chips, what else do you expect them to do?
An article worth reading about MONSANTO:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
I couldn’t find the reason Mary Gade was fired by reading the article. Since she was head of the United States EPA midwest office, it seems as if she had a very important job. Usualy when someone is fired or forced to resign, there is a very good and WELL DOCUMENTED reason.
Was she stealing company property, or cash? Did she have problems of sexual harrasment with her employees or co-workers? Was she often late for work or calling out? Was she abusive with any of her empoyees? Did she fail a drug test or was convicted of a DUI? Did she lie on her employment application? What do her annual performance reports state about her performance?
I’d bet none of those things were the reason she was forced to resign or be fired and talk about sexual harrassment, it looks like she was screwed royally and it really pisses me off that this type of crap goes on in our government and no one seems to either care or correct it.
In twenty days the citizens of Midland won’t even remember her name and ten years from now the land and waters will still be unsafe for child or beast. The big shots from Dow Chemical will be sport fishing from some Sultan’s yacht or drinking rum toddys at a private Alpine resort while giving sales pitches to the ultra wealthy for a new miracle chemical they’ve developed.
It’s a damn shame our country wasn’t set up to have a U.S. Congress that could have the power to investigate such type occurrances and point out the actual ones who should be forced to resign or go to jail. ___ A real jail, like Sheriff Joe’s tent city in Pheonix, AZ.
And a REAL congress.
Good people get ejected from corrupt systems. Mary Gade you did well.
The problem with republicans is that some are honest and have the integrity to do the right thing. It puts a kink in the old school tie.
simo :”Jesus H. Christ, I am ashamed to be a part of this wimpy half-semi left wing bullcrap! If only we had the balls of the right!! Let’s DO something!!!!!”
Am from a Third World country that has seen enough and more of Corporate America’s genocidal depredations. What you’ve said struck a very powerful chord with me.
However I notice that your passionate pleas have fallen on deaf ears out here. Most one suspects are waiting in breathless anticipation for the second coming of the Messiah . The Messiah who most hope will ,with but a single stroke ,right all the wrongs and slay the dragon that is Corporate America.
Nothing could be more a flight of sheer fancy or further away from the truth. One has only got to ask the three million and odd Vietnamese - the gnarled and stunted victims of Agent Orange . Of for that matter the thousands of victims of the Bhopal Gas Carnage.
If they could, most of these would tell you that the one thing the US has been utterly steadfast and resolute about has been the repudiation of all liability for its horrific misdeeds.
contd..
And yet ,notwithstanding this ,it is we who are expected to extend our forbearance to the country (US) and its citizenry . Most of whom we’re told ,time and again ,are ‘good decent folk ..with kindly instincts.”
The more I look at what is happening to America the whole Bush regime is AGAINST America. He vetos bills that would help, he fires those who try to help or appoints puppets who have a passed or no soul so they do as told. Then all we see is more stories and postings on web sites and all the people wishing for change that won’t happen. Sorry I have lost my faith in America.
If you are patient, kind, careful that your passions are not being fueled by base motives, if you try to remember that even the worst people are sentient beings like yourself, how do you expect to prevail against those who are careless, stupid, ruthless, and vicious?
Anybody who successfully contends against evil will find, once they have won, and the evil is gone, that they have become everything they wanted to eradicate.
It may well be that the system will have to implode to make a new start possible, and even then, who’s to say we will not make the same mistakes again?
In the end, only good can overcome evil. Only non-violence can overcome violence. Only love can overcome hate. We may have to wait for something better than a human to evolve, but it is already happening—slowly to be sure. Many more will die in the meantime, but in the end the meek will inherit the earth.
nietzche, nice fairy tale good will win over evil.
As long as the media is controled, big corps buy every elected official then the rules that control good and evil are destroyed and these people work and run by their own rules. We have wars that are illegal and human and war crimes and up to 60% of the people are against it but guess what, they continue and after Nov will continue. What next God is going to come down and fix everything? Probably he would get nailed to a cross like his son.
Any chance there will be a Congressional investigation on this? What state is Conyers from?
Imagine my surprise
Hollow point, I know I must sound like I’m living in a fantasy world. You see, I don’t believe it is a fantasy. I believe the material world is a partial reality which depends for it’s existence upon ultimate reality.
I can’t be the person I want to be without that belief. As Krishna tells Arjuna, People are made of faith; as a man’s faith is, so he is. In a different passage, Krishna assures the discouraged Arjuna that when evil grows strong on the earth, He (Lord Krishna) makes himself a body and restores righteousness.
Gail said: “If you display any sign of integrity as a Federal Government employee, be prepared to resign or get fired!”
But you must understand: Bush got elected by saying that big government didn’t work. How would it look for him if it did? So, of course, competents in government had to be weeded out, and incompetents (Brownie) put in their place. Whats surprising is that this is surprising to us.
Bush said that big government didn’t work. What part of that didn’t we understand?
I was raised in Midland, MI and my father works at Dow. I grew up with a basement packed full of Ziploc bags, Dow cleaning supplies. My dad used to bring home those little plastic pellets that they smelt into all sorts of things. He’d dump a big pile of them in our gravel driveway for us to play in.
All of my good friends growing up, their parents work at Dow. I remember in school, being asked where our families worked…always more than half my class - their parents worked at Dow.
Obviously this hits close to home (no pun intended).
We used to joke as kids about not touching the water in the Titabawasee River, because you’d grow an extra thumb or an eye in your hand. We used to joke that the fish had extra fins and eyes. We didn’t really know what we were talking about, we just knew the river was polluted. If sirens started going off, we knew it meant there was a chemical spill.
Funny, but they never teach you about Dow making Agent Orange at H.H. Dow High School.
Midland is literally the most suburban conservative town I’ve ever been in. Everyone with any kind of desire for real life gets the hell out of there as soon as they have a choice. The rest end up working in Dow or the box stores that service Dow employees.
The unfortunate reality is most folks in Midland would rather have polluted rivers than say one unkind word about the reason for the town’s very existance. I am sure the property owners along the rivers, they just want to be compensated. So long as Dow pays them off they’ll shut up. Midland has had the same congressional representative for decades, Dave Camp, and he is bought and sold by Dow.
I find it ironic that most of the town believes corporations can do whatever they want to serve the bottom-line. They think it’s fine GM closed down its facilities and put people out of work in Flint, but they probably would change their tune if Dow did the same.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. passed through Midland, MI. He was there long enough to realize it was a shit-hole and used it as the basis for Midland City in “Breakfast of Champions.” Polluted rivers and all.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I didn’t eat the wrong dirt growing up.
-Former Midland resident, now in Portland, OR
nietzsche:
well the people running the show only have faith in a few things, money, power, and the racist destruction of others due to their colour or religion. Trouble is when the watch dogs are not or can’t do their job then everyone is lost. The Nov election is the last chance for America as people who are on the outside see it. If you are not in the best job ( not just you but anyone) I suggest moving north to Canada. I see more and more US plates on the hi-ways. US people are buying land for personal use. Universities have higher than normal US students. These people have seen the writing on the wall.
DOW = Destroying Our Water.
Don’t forget folks that DOW wasn’t the only corporation that made DIOXIN, there were 10 others as well.