An Ongoing War Crime - Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam
By MARJORIE COHN

“From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).

“Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest - approximately 12 percent of the land area of Vietnam - were sprayed.

“The Vietnamese who were exposed to the chemical have suffered from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Children and grandchildren of those exposed have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded. They may never grow back and if they do, it will take 50 to 200 years to regenerate. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles have become extinct, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life.

“The U.S. government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange, when produced rapidly at high temperatures, would contain large quantities of Dioxin. Nevertheless, the chemical companies continued to produce it in this manner. The U.S. government and the chemical companies also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. But they suppressed that study and continued to spray Vietnam with Agent Orange. It wasn’t until the study was leaked in 1969 that the spraying of Agent Orange was discontinued.

“U.S. soldiers who served in Vietnam have experienced similar illnesses. After they sued the chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, that manufactured and sold Agent Orange to the government, the case settled out of court for $180 million which gave few plaintiffs more than a few thousand dollars each. Later the U.S. veterans won a legislative victory for compensation for exposure to Agent Orange. They receive $1.52 billion per year in benefits.

“But when the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange sued the chemical companies in federal court, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. Weinstein had reportedly told the chemical companies when they settled the U.S. veterans’ suit that their liability was over and he was making good on his promise. His dismissal was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The chemical companies admitted in their filing in the Supreme Court that the harm alleged by the victims was foreseeable although not intended. How can something that is foreseeable be unintended?

“On May 15 and 16 of this year, the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange convened in Paris and heard testimony from 27 victims, witnesses and scientific experts. Seven people from three continents served as judges of the Tribunal, which was sponsored by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).

“Testimony given by the witnesses showed the following:

“Mai Giang Vu, a member of the Army of South Vietnam, carried barrels of the chemicals on his back. His two sons could not walk or function normally, their limbs gradually “curled up” and they could only crawl. They died at the ages of 23 and 25.

“Pham The Minh, whose parents also served in the South Vietnamese Army, showed the Tribunal his severely deformed, crooked, skinny legs; he has great difficulty walking, as well as digestive and pulmonary diseases.

“To Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese who worked as a journalist during the spraying. Her daughter weighed 6.6 pounds at the age of three months. Her skin began shredding and she could not bear to have skin contact or simple demonstrations of love. She died at 17 months, weighing 6.6 pounds. Ms. To described a woman who gave birth to a “ball” with no human form. Many children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds.

“Rosemarie Hohn Mizo is the widow of George Mizo, who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1967. He slept on contaminated ground and consumed food and drink that were also contaminated. George refused to serve after he was wounded for the third time; he was court-martialed and sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. George helped found the Friendship Village where Vietnamese victims live in a supportive environment. He died from conditions related to his exposure to Agent Orange.

“Georges Doussin, co-founder of the Friendship Village, visited a dormitory where he saw 50 highly deformed “monsters,” who produced inhuman sounds. One man whose parent had been exposed to Agent Orange had four toes on each foot. Doussin said Agent Orange creates “total anarchy in evolution.”

“Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, from Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), sees many children born without arms and/or legs, without heads or faces, and without a brain chamber. According to the World Health Organization, only 1 – 4 parts per trillion (PPT) of Dioxin in breast milk can cause severe deformities in fetuses and even death. But up to 1450 PPT are found in maternal milk in Vietnam.

“Dr. Jeanne Stellman, who wrote the seminal article about Agent Orange in the magazine Nature, testified that “this is the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world (except for natural disasters).”

“Dr. Jean Grassman, from Brooklyn College at City University of New York, testified that Dioxin is a potent cellular disregulator which alters a variety of pathways to disrupt many systems. Children, she said, are very sensitive to Dioxin; the intrauterine or post natal exposure to Dioxin may result in altered immune, neurobehavioral, and hormonal functioning. Women pass their exposure to their children both in utero and through the excretion of Dioxin in breast milk.

“Many ecosystems have been destroyed and Dioxin continues to poison Vietnam, especially in the several “hot spots.”

“Chemist Dr. Pierre Vermeulin testified that it was estimated that $1 billion would be required to restore one hectare of land in Vietnam. The cost of caring for the victims, many of whom need 24-hour care, is enormous.

“In 1973, President Richard Nixon promised $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid to Vietnam “without any preconditions.” That aid was never granted.

“There are only 11 Friendship Villages in Vietnam; 1000 are needed to care for the child victims of Agent Orange.

“Last week, the Bureau of the IADL, meeting in Hanoi, presented President Nguyen Minh Triet of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with the final decision of the Tribunal. The judges found the U.S. government and the chemical companies guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ecocide during the illegal U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. We recommended that the Agent Orange Commission be established in Vietnam to assess the damages suffered by the people and destruction of the environment, and that the U.S. government and the chemical companies provide compensation for the damage and destruction.

“I told the President that it always struck me that even as U.S. bombs were dropping on the people of Vietnam, they always distinguished between the American government and the American people. The President responded, ‘We fought the forces of aggression but we always reserved our love for the people of America . . . because we knew they always supported us.’

“An estimated 3 million Vietnamese people were killed in the war, which also claimed 58,000 American lives. For many other Vietnamese and U.S. veterans and their families, the war continues to take its toll.

“Several treaties the United States has ratified require an effective remedy for violations of human rights. It is time to make good on Nixon’s promise and remedy the terrible wrong the U.S. government perpetrated on the people of Vietnam. Congress must pass legislation to compensate the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange as it did for the U.S. Vietnam veteran victims.

“Our government must know that it cannot continue to use weapons that target and harm civilians. Indeed, the U.S. military is using depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will poison those countries for incalculable decades.”

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild, served as a judge on the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. She is a member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her latest book is Rules of Disengagement.

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2915

Agent Orange is a mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, manufactured by Monsanto.

According to Monsanto Watch Factsheet,
http://www.monsantowatch.org/index.php?page=none

“The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state. By 1982, nearby Times Beach, Missouri, was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated. Dioxins are endocrine and immune system disruptors, cause congenital birth defects, reproductive and developmental problems, and increase the incidence of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in laboratory animals.”

Monsanto is a drug, chemical and biotech company with a long and terrible history of contamination, toxic products and a wildly arrogant disregard for anything like public health or safety. The Monsanto Watch Project of the Center for Food Safety says,

“Monsanto, best know today for its agricultural biotechnology products, has a long and dirty history of polluting this country and others with some of the most toxic compounds known to humankind. From PCBs to Agent Orange to Roundup, we have many reasons to question the motives of this company that claims to be working to reduce environmental destruction and feed the world with its genetically engineered food crops….

In the 1970s, Monsanto began manufacturing the herbicide Roundup, which has been marketed as a [sic] safe, general-purpose herbicide for widespread commercial and consumer use, even though its key ingredient, glyphosate, is a highly toxic poison for animals and humans. In 1997, The New York State Attorney General took Monsanto to court and Monsanto was subsequently forced to stop claiming that Roundup is “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly.”

Monsanto has been repeatedly fined and ruled against for, among many things, mislabeling containers of Roundup, failing to report health data to EPA, and chemical spills and improper chemical deposition. In 1995, Monsanto ranked fifth among U.S. corporations in EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, having discharged 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land, water and underground. “

http://www.monsantowatch.org/index.php?page=none

Dioxin and DDT are similar compounds which are in the dangerous class of “chlorinated hydrocarbons”. These organic chemical consist of a pair of benzene rings, hydrogen and and four chlorine atoms. Dioxin also contains an oxygen atom. DDT and dioxin share several characteristics:

* Both DDT and dioxin are toxic in small quantities.
* Neither of them degrades in the environment — they both exist indefinitely once released.
* Both dissolve and accumulate in fat.

How toxic is Dioxin?

“The toxicity of dioxin is something that the scientific community does not seem to agree upon. Dioxin became notorious in the 1980s because of Agent Orange and several dioxin dumps (like Love Canal) discovered in the United States. You will see many, many pages on the Web (such as this one) that describe dioxin as the most toxic substance on the planet. Then you will see other references like this one from Encyclopedia Britannica:

“Toxicologists [sic] mistakenly concluded from studies on laboratory animals that TCDD (dioxin) was one of the most toxic of all man-made substances… Subsequent research, however, discounted most of these inferences, which were based on the effects of very high doses of TCDD on guinea pigs and other peculiarly susceptible animals. Among humans, the only disease definitely found related to TCDD is chloracne, which develops shortly after exposure to the chemical.”

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question220.htm

To our analysis, dioxin is, in fact, a tremendously toxic compound which is found in significant concentrations in Roundup (c). In fact, Roundup’s principal ingredient, glyphosate, is often referred to as the second most toxic compound known in nature. If dioxin is the first, and glyphosate is the second, what are they doing on your food?

And, since dioxin is found in Roundup(c) and does not break down in nature, it certainly is in your food and your environment, your water and, sadly, your bodies. For example, dioxin contamination from 800 to 2000 times greater than permitted was recently found in Irish pork products and was traced to a feed from a feed plant there. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready (c) corn and soy are permitted in the EU for animal feed although GMO foods are banned for human consumption unless labeled clearly there.

Monsanto’s potential for damage is not limited to pesticides, of which they list 29 products approved for use in the US.

They make aspartame, having acquired the patent when they bought the Searle drug company. It is no surprise that aspartame, included in many vaccines, by the way, is viewed by Advanced Healthcare Researchers as a leading cause of MS, Lupus and other life threatening diseases, including cancer. Despite this evidence, which led the FDA to keep aspartame out of food and drink for 11 years, as soon as Donald Rumsfeld and Ronald Regan came into power, the old head of FDA was out in a flash and the first act of the next FDA head was to approve unlimited use of this toxic material.

Monsanto is the world’s leading owner of genetic patents and the world’s leading GMO seed producer. Most of their GMO seeds are modified to allow them to tolerate high doses - really, really high doses - of an herbicide called ‘Glyphosate’. According to toxicologists, exposure to Glyphosate is strongly associated with cancer, infertility, loss of pregnancies, birth defects, auto immune disorders (such as Lupus), neurological disorders and other serious adverse events up to, and including, death.

Glyphosate is marketed around the world as “Roundup” (R) and its seeds are marketed as “Roundup Ready” (R) soy, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, rice, strawberries, papaya, taro, coffee, etc. Roundup Ready(R) soy and corn are widely used as animal feed, which means that their deadly genetic materials and toxic load wind up in your cells and your baby’s if you are pregnant or feeding your children GMO foods.

Roundup (R) is an herbicide. It kills plants which have not been modified to accept it. The material which is sprayed on the plants kills agricultural workers, makes them infertile and creates a host of horrific diseases in them and their children, as well as people down wind or down river from them. In fact, as you look at your lush, bright, chemically contaminated GMO veggies and eat your 90% GMO modified diet (if you are eating prepared and conventional “food” that is) we rarely think of the fact that agricultural workers in what is sadly called “conventional agriculture” have astoundingly high cancer, infertility and birth defect rates.

Monsanto is facing super weeds and a marketing problem: Roundup (R) is no longer as “effective” as it used to be in killing off super weeds which have now acquired the genes from the pollen of the GMO seeds and are becoming Roundup (R) resistant. Not only that, but competitors are seeking to tear market share away from the originator of this particular poisoned plant system.

Monsanto probably pays some pretty good salaries, though, for some diabolically clever brain power. Their solution? Come up with new and improved versions of Roundup (R) which contains up to 70% Agent Orange. See:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DMPGR.php

“Let the Culling Begin!”

There is, in short, no medical, logical reason for the Swine Flu vaccine, which will be made mandatory, if the WHO, CDC and White House are to be believed. There is no medical, logical reason for the Level 6 Swine Flu Pandemic Emergency which was declared by Dr. Chen of the WHO on July 11, 2009.

Unless, of course, you want to kill a whole lot of people with a weaponized vaccine.

If there is no intention to let the culling begin, why else include provisions in BioShield, Patriot Acts I, II and III, and bull through the Emergency Medical Powers Acts in virtually every state giving both the Federal Government and the States the “right” to quarantine you indefinitely if you refuse the vaccine or drug offered to you in a Pandemic State? If that does not seem like a good idea to you, then click here,
salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27275

to demand your right to self-quarantine if vaccinations or involuntary incarceration is orders, as it well may be as soon as the first commercially available flu vaccine is ready. You can also click here,
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2752

to read our informative White Paper on Self Quarantine and THEN take the action step and forward it to everyone you know to ask them to do the same.

If no culling is anticipated, why else expend billions of dollars ($7.65B approved by the House of Representatives for Swine Flu vaccines and drugs last week alone) on a wildly dangerous, untested, unnecessary vaccine for a disease which WHO Director Chan admits causes no symptoms and requires no treatment? And why rush through legislation which industrializes the food supply of an entire country to the lowest agricultural, anti-health denominator? Well, perhaps because the World Health Organization says that to maintain a sustainable planet, we need to reduce the population by 90%. And perhaps, in your mind, you’re it.

And perhaps because the doctrine that depopulation must be the first priority of the United States Government’s Foreign Policy articulated so chillingly in NSA Memorandum 200 by Henry Kissinger in 1974 was adopted by the US Government but has never been repudiated?
And perhaps because the UN’s plans for long-term sustainability call for the same thing? Could that be?

Well, if not, please write to me at dr.laibow@gmail.com and tell me what else explains it.

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2915

See Codex Alimentarius and Population Control for more info...

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/06/codex-alimentarius.html

http://yophat.blogspot.com/2009/06/population-control.html