By Frosty Wooldridge
Part 4: Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and Chevron all developed 70,000 chemicals now poisoning our world 24/7
As a baby boomer, my Schwinn bike and I delivered 80 Atlanta Constitution-Journal newspapers seven days a week at 5 a.m. with the rising sun. After that, I sped off to school for classes all day. Study, study, study every moment of my spare time! After school, football, basketball and track in the spring. Evenings, study, study and more study.
My dad said, “Do your schoolwork first, and then, sports. Your academics will carry you through life successfully. Sports will keep your fit and balanced.”
In 1965, I roared into college with little idea of what I would do with my life. Nonetheless, I forged ahead with basic classes in English, history, math, science, French and humanities. Not until my sophomore year did I take a class in Creative Writing with Mrs. Beatrice Moynihan. She inspired me toward journalism. It’s been a raging passion since 1966.
When I first attended Michigan State University, I thought our elected officials carried out the best intentions of the American people. I thought they were our best and brightest. John F. Kennedy inspired us, but carried-on endless affairs behind his wife’s back. Bill Clinton and Kennedy should share a jail cell in Hades. Later, I discovered Lyndon Baines Johnson was a racist, sexist, philanderer, crook and liar right up there with Al Capone.
My idealism changed by 1968 when I discovered politics and politicians represented a whole new class of dishonest, deceitful and self-absorbed scoundrels. They lied and lied the about Vietnam War while young kids died to make bankers rich. We awoke with the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg explicitly showing White House big wigs continuing the war to make money and save face. They were pathetic, amoral men. Yes, a few good ones prevailed in the halls of Congress, but as attested today, the majority of Congressional critters take the American people into horrible wars, non-action as to the drug invasion over our borders, unsecured borders and dozens of other consequential acts to harm the American people. You could name a dozen off the tip of your tongue right now. The corruption in DC rages beyond our imagination.
Let’s talk about the current opioid addiction in 2019-20 orchestrated by Big Pharma and medical doctors. They KNEW those drugs addicted and killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans, BUT they still distributed them. Medical doctors and Big Pharma companies kill over 100,000 Americans annually with prescribed drugs, BUT still manufacture and prescribe them to innocent Americans. They never mention or advise a healthy nutritional diet and exercise! NEVER, EVER!
As an optimistic youth, I graduated from MSU with a sense of being able to change racism to respect, the Vietnam War into peace and Dow Chemical Company along with Monsanto into honorable companies that wouldn’t poison the world.
Instead, I discovered that racism can’t be stopped because its biological. I realized that the Military Industrial Complex created wars in order to profit the very rich. I discovered that Dow Chemical and Monsanto bribed members of Congress in order to spread their poisons to the far ends of the earth with total immunity. Notice Roundup by the rows of gallons on the selves of Home Depot, Walmart, Lowes, Ace and the rest. If their owners were ethical, they would not carry such deadly products. If the American public wasn’t so stupid, it/they wouldn’t buy those poisons.
If not for Rachal Carson’s Silent Spring, Dow and Monsanto would have you believe that DDT, Roundup and Agent Orange benefited the Natural World. At the time, we watched robins drop out of trees on MSU’s campus from DDT being sprayed all over campus. It killed bald eagles. It poisoned insects that the birds ate and killed the birds in the process. It seeps into the ground to poison the angleworms and destroy the PH balance and nitro-fixing bacteria. Monsanto, Dow Chemical and Bayer and their shareholders are the true ecological terrorists on the planet. Ask anyone with Parkinson’s Disease, MS, MD, Autism and the list grows.
We finally banned DDT because of Carson’s work, but Chevron and other big chemicals giants still produce it and sell it to South America and India. How do I know? I traveled in those places to smell it and see it being sprayed, so I know it’s still being produced and used around the world. Those corporate heads at Dow and Monsanto should share a jail cell in hell for their crimes against Mother Nature.
At this point, those huge companies created 70,000 chemicals being used in the world today 24/7. They poison the air, ground water, soil, rivers, and ultimately our oceans. We’re losing over 100 species daily to extinction around the world from those poisons and habitat encroachment. (Source: Norman Myers, Oxford University, “Sixth Extinction Session” 40-year study)
Do you remember Marlboro Man, Lucky Strike and Menthol Cigarettes? Sports heroes promoted them. Doctors praised the health benefits of smoking. The tobacco companies paid billions of dollars to keep Congress from banning tobacco as an agent of death. Today, we lose 450,000 Americans annually to tobacco-cancer deaths. And, still Congress refuses to ban tobacco. Think: money, greed and more money. In 2020, our kids don’t possess a clue of their lifetime addiction to nicotine and the cancers it produces in the human body. But once they become hooked, they suffer addiction until they die of a premature and nasty death.
As to Monsanto’s insecticides and pesticides, do you know about Bee Colony Collapse as it manifests around the world as the poisons kill the pollinators into the billions, if not trillions of bees. Once we kill off enough pollinators, the human race faces a tenuous future.
Do you think the members of Congress would stop it with all the facts now on the table? Did they stop tobacco from killing millions of Americans? Answer: not a chance with bribes leading the way.
We wonder why Autism once affected 1 life birth in 80,000 births; but today, it affects 1 child in 88 live births. It’s a neurological nightmare for the body. Of course, Dow Chemical and Monsanto will bribe our Congressional Critters to make sure no one stops the chemicals pouring out of their manufacturing plants in Midland, Michigan.
Again, it’s a “Faustian Bargain” where such people treasure money over health and wellness of our world.
As this point in the latter years of my life, I am under no illusion that our presidents or members of Congress will ever do the right or ethical thing by the American people. They serve money and power, first, last and always. Soberingly, it’s much worse around the world in poverty-stricken third world countries, dictatorships and the like.
So, what can you do? Can you stop buying Roundup, Weed B Gone, insecticides, herbicides and any other chemicals that disrupt the Natural World? Can you write letters to the editor to have those poisons banned from Home Depot, Lowes, Target, Walmart and Ace stores? Can you educate your city council to stop using those poisons?
As I said in the previous column, Charles Kellogg saved the last 5 percent of the redwoods in California from the lumberman’s ax. Is it possible that you can do the same in your own community? I may be an old man, and I may be tired out from my struggles over the last 73 years, yet I carry the hope, the energy and the fortitude of John Muir that each of us can make a difference to make it a better world for our children. How about you?
© 2020 Frosty Wooldridge – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com
