Open Letter To All Employees Of Monsanto

The Green Place

Dear Friends,

In addressing you today, I wish to draw your attention to the background of Monsanto, a company whose name and products are held in contempt not only within the United States, but also in every country where it has offices, its products sold and used. The reason for the contempt goes back to the United States War on Vietnam, in particular August 10th 1961.when the first use of the herbicide Agent Orange began.

President Roosevelt speaking of the attack on Pearl Harbour December 7th 1941 stated, “It will be a day that will live in infamy”.

So too friends will August 10th 1961, for on that day began the spraying of 80 million litres of Agent Orange – manufactured by your company along with others. The spraying was to continue for ten-years. I ask you to imagine every day for ten-years A Vietnamese Pearl Harbour. The loss of life on that day in 1941 was indeed tragic, but consider the loss of life over ten-years, and the millions born years after the war ended in 1975 crippled in mind and body due to Agent Orange.

Today in Vietnam there are over three million victims suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, and the company you work for Monsanto, is one of those responsible.

Hugh Grant who holds the positions of President, Chairman, and Chief Executive of your company was just three years of age when the spraying began and 13 years when it stopped. So we cannot blame him then. But, on reaching the age of 23 in 1981 – six-years after the Vietnam War ended, Hugh Grant joined Monsanto, and would have known the history of the company and its products including Agent Orange, its use on Vietnam and the effect on the people and land.

When he became President, Chairman and CEO if he did not know of Agent Orange and its use, then he is unfit to remain with the company. Shamefully Monsanto’s public relation office to this very day continues to deny any responsibility for the illnesses and deformities that Agent Orange has caused to the people of Vietnam. Nor have they made any financial compensation to the Vietnamese victims. Yet the evidence is plain to see if Hugh Grant or the people who write these denials were to visit the victims in the hospitals, clinics, or in their homes as I have done many times indeed, the offices of Monsanto and Dow Chemicals – another company responsible for Agent Orange – are just a ten-minute car ride away from the Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

In my visits to these offices I have asked that the director or manager to visit or come with me to the Tu Du Hospital, each time they have refused, instead they give me a statement that denies all responsibility.

But Hugh Grant and/or his board members do not have to go to Vietnam to see some of the victims of Agent Orange; they can seen in many cities of the United States, for those who served in Vietnam were also affected and are suffering from the same illnesses and disabilities that the Vietnamese have. Many, again like the Vietnamese victims, have died as a result of Agent Orange.

Friends, next year, 2011, will see the 50th anniversary of the spraying of Agent Orange on Vietnam. Remember the date 10th August. It will be a day when millions in Vietnam and its friends in many countries around the world will commemorate as a day of infamy.

Tomorrow, as you walk through the gates of your company Monsanto, I ask you to remember the deaths and disabilities that Agent Orange has caused, especially to the many thousands of innocent children who died in their mother’s womb, and those who survived born with deformities and ask yourself: Why am I working for such a company as MONSANTO?

Yours sincerely

Len Aldis. Secretary
Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society

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Scientists Find Thick Layer of Oil On Seafloor

Richard Harris
NPR

Scientists on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico are finding a substantial layer of oily sediment stretching for dozens of miles in all directions. Their discovery suggests that a lot of oil from the Deepwater Horizon didn't simply evaporate or dissipate into the water — it has settled to the seafloor.

The Research Vessel Oceanus sailed on Aug. 21 on a mission to figure out what happened to the more than 4 million barrels of oil that gushed into the water. Onboard, Samantha Joye, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, says she suddenly has a pretty good idea about where a lot of it ended up. It's showing up in samples of the seafloor, between the well site and the coast.


"I've collected literally hundreds of sediment cores from the Gulf of Mexico, including around this area. And I've never seen anything like this," she said in an interview via satellite phone from the boat.

Joye describes seeing layers of oily material — in some places more than 2 inches thick — covering the bottom of the seafloor.

"It's very fluffy and porous. And there are little tar balls in there you can see that look like microscopic cauliflower heads," she says.

It's very clearly a fresh layer. Right below it she finds much more typical seafloor mud. And in that layer, she finds recently dead shrimp, worms and other invertebrates.

'A Slime Highway'

How did the oily sediment get there? Joye says it's possible that chemical dispersants might have sunk some oil, but it's also likely that natural systems are playing an important role.

"The organisms that break down oil excrete mucus — copious amounts of mucus," Joye says. "So it's kind of like a slime highway from the surface to the bottom. Because eventually the slime gets heavy and it sinks."

That sticky material can pick up oil particles as it sinks. Joye can't yet say with certainty that the oily layer is from BP's blown-out well.

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BALD EAGLE NESTLINGS CONTAMINATED BY CHEMICALS

The national symbol of the United States is ingesting flame retardants and pesticides through its food.
Comment: What does this mean for the food supply for human beings? Is this just another example of the deliberate poisoning of the water and food supply in America? Oftentimes the identified cause of contamination is only "part" of the story. Chemtrails are not even mentioned in the article.

THE GIST

• A study of bald eagle nestlings found pesticides and flame retardants in their blood.
• The chemicals are suspected in slowing the eagles' post-DDT recovery in Michigan.
• There are lots of new flame retardants in use, the health effects of which we know little or nothing.

The discovery has broader implications about
 the way chemicals are produced and used
in the United States. Click to enlarge this image.
Stockbyte

Ever since the banning of the pesticide DDT, which weakened eggshells, bald eagles have been making a comeback in the Great Lakes region.

In Michigan, however, that recovery has been lackluster, and researchers have found one potential reason why: flame retardants and pesticides in the blood of eagle nestlings.

"(Eagles) have recovered mostly, but not to what was expected," said Marta Venier of Indiana University. Venier is the lead author of a paper in the August issue of the journal Chemosphere, which describes a "snapshot" of what is in eagle nestlings' blood in near lakes around Michigan.

Venier and her colleagues were able to collect blood samples of bald eagle nestlings in the Great Lakes region by arduously climbing trees, bagging the large nestlings and carrying them carefully to the ground to draw a small sample of blood. The birds were then returned to their nests angry, but unharmed.

Tests on the blood show that the national symbol of the United States is ingesting flame retardants and pesticides via its food. The chemicals are originally from pesticides or foam padding for furniture and mattresses, which contain a variety of flame retardants.

"Eagles are very vulnerable to chlorinated compounds," said Ronald Hites, also of Indiana University and a co-author of the study. Flame retardants can make up 10 percent of the weight of foam padding, Hites told Discovery News. Because the chemicals spew out every time we sit or lie down on the padding, the same chemicals are also found abundantly in humans, he said.

Discarded furniture in landfills moves the flame retardants into runoff, soil and the air, Hites said. These sources last for decades and make their way to such animals as bald eagles. It's not known if the chemicals are having health effects on the eagles. But they are a suspect, as is habitat loss, in the slowed eagle recovery.

The eagle nestling discovery has broader implications about the way chemicals are produced and used in the United States, said Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

"We shouldn't be making chemicals that don't go away for a long time," Birnbaum told Discovery News. And we should not replace newly banned chemicals with potentially even more dangerous untested chemicals, she said. "There is very little information on their toxicity. It's a problem with our regulatory system."

Some of the substitutes for polyurethane foam, for instance, are now found in human blood and urine. Are they a health threat? Nobody knows.

There is legislation in Congress which would change this, said Birnbaum, if it ever becomes law. In the meantime the bald eagle nestlings should be a matter of concern.

"Just because you don't know anything (about a chemical) doesn't mean you're safe," Birnbaum said.

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