If you don't know, or didn't already google what Agent Orange actually is, I will give you a brief summary. However, I encourage you to Google pretty much everything I'm telling you, because I am not going to take the time to put all the links, and there are thousands of links regarding Agent Orange, who manufactures it, their crimes, GMO's, and their blatant disregard for the health and lives of Americans and people around the world. As you will find out, nearly every other industrialized country in the world has banned or severely restricted nearly everything produced by the two most vile offenders; Monsanto and Dow. If you would like to do a quick sanity check, type "Monsanto" in the Google search bar. You don't even have to press enter to see that I am not alone in my assessment.
Agent Orange is a herbicide/defoliant, that was created by two companies for use during the Vietnam War. Those companies were Monsanto and Dow. The US military sprayed Agent Orange all over Vietnam in an attempt to kill pretty much anything and everything green, in order to make it easier to spot the guerrilla fighters hiding in the brush. The story goes, and I will allow you to make up your own mind regarding this, that the chemicals that were used to make up Agent Orange were accidentally contaminated with an extremely toxic dioxin compound. I know nothing about chemistry or dioxin compounds, nor do I know the likelihood of such a contamination taking place. I am desperate to believe in the whole "accidental" claim, so for now we will assume I do.
If you did your Googling, then you saw the effects of Agent Orange on children that are born in 2012. Such severe deformities and infant mortality, all caused by a herbicide that was sprayed in Vietnam in the 70's. It was only literally in the past few days that the US agreed to a "clean up effort". Whatever that means.
Thailand wasn't the only country exposed to this "herbicide". Several other countries were used as dump sites for agent orange, as was Pacific ocean. And shockingly, a Department of Defense report released in 2006, (according to Wikipedia) admitted to storage, testing, and disposal at 32 different places in the US. And finally, the US was using Agent Orange in our national forests in the 70's, until the EPA forced them to stop when women living around the forests were found to have triple the miscarriages of an average woman. I have no clue where these sites are, but I haven't found any evidence of them being "cleaned up" as of now. Again, whatever that means. It is important to note that I hold the soldiers in no way responsible for any of this. They actually sued the government for the effects it had on them, and a fund was set up for veterans with health issues associated with the effects of Agent Orange.
Monsanto and Dow, the manufacturers of Agent Orange, were never, as far as I am aware, held accountable for this tragic "accident". Unfortunately, accidents do indeed happen. And Monsanto and Dow seem to be very "accident prone". We will get to their other currently known "accidents", which were found to be not accidents by a long shot, but blatant disregard for human life.
I feel like I should have said this already, but if everyone already knows this, and they just don't say anything because they know about some hit squad Monsanto and Dow employ to kill anyone who talks about this, then please make me aware. Otherwise, there really is only one of two possibilities for citizens of this country's seeming lack of knowledge. People either know and don't care, or somehow this company is so powerful that they have been able to keep it from the majority. Again, if everyone knows and simply doesn't care, then let me know. I will start to pack my bags.
In installment 3, we will talk about two different incidents, one involving Dow, and one involving Monsanto, completely unrelated, where both companies KNOWINGLY dumped chemicals, LITERALLY in people's backyards, then knowingly hid it from them. In each case, it took people dying and devastating health issues of nearly everyone in the community to sound the alarm against these companies. In both cases, the communities they dumped their toxic waste in were mostly poor minorities with little recourse; but that was obviously strategic on their part. I will also fill you in on their confession, established guilt, and subsequent punishment.
Finally, I will tell you how much a human life is worth. In US dollars.
