chemical

Sometimes horrible things happen. A guy fills a truck with homemade explosives and blows away half of the Federal building in Oklahoma City, 168 people are left dead. Two teenagers bring semi-automatic assault weapons, shotguns and explosives to their high school in Colorado, carrying out an assault that left 15 people dead and over 100 injured. A disgruntled copy machine repairman comes to his Honolulu office one day with a 9mm handgun and kills 7 co-workers.

Most of us find these actions not only horrifying, but also shocking to the point of disbelief. How could someone do something like this? How could anyone be so insensitive, and selfish toward their fellow man?

Last week PBS aired TRADE SECRETS, an amazing two hour Bill Moyers documentary on the chemical industry (check out the website – it is pretty informative and horrifying itself).
“Of the more than 75,000 chemicals registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, only a fraction have gone through complete testing to find out whether they might cause problems for human health. Many that are produced in enormous quantities have never been tested at all. Usually, it takes dramatic episodes of workplace injuries or wildlife poisonings, combined with rigorous scientific proof of harm and public outcry, before the government will act to restrict or ban any chemical. And that is no accident. The current regulatory system allows synthetic chemicals into our lives unless one is proven beyond doubt to be dangerous.” Dangers range from testicular atrophy to brain cancer.

There was also this bit of information released:

Fifty Years of Deception: Archive of Chemical Industry Secrets Goes Online
WASHINGTON, March 27 -- The Environmental Working Group today posted online 50 years and 25,000 pages of insider documents that reveal, in their own words, how chemical executives knowingly exposed workers and the public to cancer-causing chemicals, polluted whole communities and devoted vast resources to covering up the truth. The searchable archive of documents is available exclusively at http://www.ewg.org.

The horror of all of this, in a nutshell is this: THE EXECUTIVES KNEW THE DANGERS, AND SPENT VAST RESOURCES TO COVER UP THE TRUTH.

Why wasn’t the money spent on warnings, prevention, care, and research to make things safer?

Erin Brockovich is only the tip of the iceberg.

Now for me, these are horrors way beyond the senseless and violent crimes of a lone terrorist bombing, or school and workplace shootings. Yes, those are hideous beyond imagining, but one or two pissed off individuals are not the same as a conspiracy planned by a group of corporate executives and the fact their crimes affect millions of people. What is even more horrifying is that it isn’t just one group, but MANY. The CEOs at Phillip-Morris must have a huge chip on their shoulder since their crimes are farm league compared to the cumulative crimes of the CHEMICAL Companies.

How does a society get to the point of moral corruption where money and profit are far more important than human life? How does that happen, and how does it become the normal way a business operates? How does it also get backing and turn into a political party? Further still, how is it that these people are not punished for their crimes, but end up in control of the government?

From http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/evidence/money.html if you put your mouse on Smirk’s photo you find this: “The candidate receiving the largest chemical industry contribution in 2000, $549,436, was George W. Bush. Put your mouse on Al’s pic, and you get this: “Democratic opponent Gore received just over one-tenth this amount, or $55,800.”

It is any wonder that the some of the first orders of the day from Smirk’s office is to lie and say that Carbon Dioxide is not a poison (try putting a plastic bag over your head and see how long you stay alive on Carbon Dioxide) and disavow the Kyoto Protocol; give the OK that arsenic levels in water are just fine, even though the world standard for water on this poison and known carcinogen is much stricter; and call a stop to testing for salmonella in beef products for the Federal School Lunch program? What's next, dismantle the EPA just so his contributors won't be put out by having to clean up their collective act? Thankfully Congress has finally woken up, come to its senses and is voting to block some of these insane moves.

Is Smirk really that out of touch he doesn’t see the overwhelming damage his decisions will make not only in the immediate future, but also in the long run? Someone might think he was the foreign spy set in place by a treasonous family to bring down the country by bankrupting the nation one state at a time, beginning with California.

I think he needs to get out more. He needs to go on a world tour ending with India or Africa, or force him to spend a month living in any slum in his own country.

Maybe someone should rent a Star Trek film for Bush The Younger – As Spock quotes from the honored past –
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.