Revolt Against the Empire

by Jon Rappoport

Introduction

This is a boycott against the eight biggest pesticide companies in the world, but it is much more than that. It's a boycott against THE POWER and against a way of life represented by all the gigantic multinational corporations, which every day extend their control over the planet. By the time you finish reading this material you'll realize how destructive their power is, in detail. You'll understand more clearly why these simple stark things need to be done:

stop buying these corporations' products;

don't buy their stock on whatever exchanges they're traded;

demand that others including institutions sell their stock in these companies;

don't work for these corporations;

find a way to personally pass on the word.

This is definitely a PASS IT ON thing.

The eight corporations to be boycotted are:

Dow

Du Pont

Monsanto

Imperial Chemical Industries

Novartis

Rhone Poulenc

Bayer

Hoechst

There is one overriding reason for going after these eight corporations. They are all forwarding genetic projects to engineer food seeds so that our food supply in the fields will accept much higher doses of herbicides without curling up and dying. This will drench both the soil and our bodies with corporate toxic chemicals and improve their profit statements.

Of course, these mega-companies are up to their eyeballs in poisons. Poisons, you might say, are their life.

These corporations and others like them stand for control of the planet, as around us the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Huge multinationals, of course blur with governments, thereby availing themselves of important political connections, intelligence agencies, military links.

Despite protestations to the contrary, multinationals that destroy the world's air, water, soil, trees and human/animal health don't consider life the bottom line. Money and power are always the bottom line. Toxic clean-ups and smokestack filters notwithstanding.

Shall we passively go along with the redefinition of global life as 'units produced' and 'number of android employees hypnotized into loving the cubicle, the factory line, the lab, the computer station'?

Shall we say this is the highest and best expression of life on this planet?

Shall we say we accept a planet seeping with chemical poisons?

Shall we decide to create a pink fluff of "spirituality" around our heads and buffer ourselves off from the destruction of the natural world?

Shall we pretend that electing people from one party or another to national office will unseat these corporate rulers?

Shall we fake it entirely?

Shall we imagine that growing a little organic garden in the backyard will completely stop the annual use in the U.S. of six trillion pounds of industrial chemicals?

We are dealing with monopolies. A monopoly will say or do anything to dominate its chosen sphere. You throw out a monopoly by doing two things:

boycotting the hell out of it as described above;

and then developing real alternatives for their toxic products.

So, yes, the worldwide revolution in organic growing of food is a tremendous alternative to pesticide mongers, but not without a powerful, loud and ongoing boycott. These companies, if forced into lower production of pesticides, will try ANYTHING to win. Hell, they'll sell the idea that tons of their organophosphates should be released into outer space to kill floating viruses! And you know what? Millions of brain-dead TV-watchers would buy in.

If you think I'm exaggerating in estimating how far multinationals will go in trying to peddle their toxins, meditate on the fact that the completely descredited and horrible drug, Thalidomide, a sedative that caused massive deformation in babies, is now being tested on people with AIDS.

Dow and Monsanto would still be selling their stocks of Agent Orange left over from the Vietnam War if enough people hadn't kept up a thunder of protest about dioxin, the molecule this defoliant contained which causes cancer, birth defects and immune suppression, and is called by scientists the most poisonous small molecule on the planet.

So the answer to a monopoly is: boycott it and lay down real alternatives to the needs it pretends to fill.

The Great Boycott is not being run as an organization with a single leader and a cadre of assistants. It is being run by YOU. On your own you'll find new nasty multinationals to add to the list and you'll spell out the reasons why. You'll discover good boycotts already underway sponsored by people who have worked harder than any of us for years, decades. This boycott if it succeeds will be run by small groups of people all over the world using the Internet, faxes, home-grown articles, videos, audio tapes. Using self published booklets, papers, info sheets, flyers. In LA we're going to have monthly meetings to keep our participation moving out into wider circles.

The way things look, unless we launch a major effort our human societies in the 21st Century are going to disappear up their own anuses. If that's too graphic for you, take a look some time at Rocky Flats, Colorado, world center for poisonous leaking chemicals; or look at a baby deformed by these chemicals. That's what graphic really is. Steady state politeness and niceness are not going to carry the day. Don't knuckle under. Don't believe liars. Don't march off the cliff. Boycott!

The Corporations

Each of these eight corporations is at least four things: a pesticide company, a pharmaceutical company, a genetic food seed company and a producer of industrial chemicals.

Du Pont

Number one in chemical sales in the U.S. $35 billion. 141,000 employees. Headquarters Wilmingon, Delaware.

The definitive text on this transnational has been written by Gerard Colby. It is called Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (1984 Lyle Stuart).

Colby and Ralph Nader agree that Du Pont owns Delaware. Sixty percent of the state works for a Du Pont asset of some kind.

"Predictably", Colby writes,

"the long arm of Du Pont can also be found inWashington, D.C. Du Pont family members have represented Delaware in both houses of Congress. In the last 40 years Du Pont Lieutenants have served as representatives, senators, U.S. Attorney General, secretaries of Defense, Directors of the CIA and even Supreme Court Justices. With this power 'the armorers of the Republic', as they like to call themselves, have helped drive America into world wars, sabotaged world disarmament conferences ..."

Co-owner of the Salem nuclear power plant in the Delaware River, the Du Pont asset Delmarva Power and Light has supported a facility literally built on sand. The plant has had structural cracks, radioactive water leaks and incidents of over-pressurization.

"The Du Ponts," writes Colby,

"have a big stake in nuclear power. Their chemical company helped make the atomic and hydrogen bombs for the government, operates the nation's only processor of heavy water, tritium, and weapons grade plutonium . . . For years Du Pont has been one of the government's largest nuclear contractors, and its recently acquired oil subsidiary Conoco (Continental Oil Company) owns one of the largest uranium reserves and processing mills in the United States."

Therefore, Du Pont is one of the major major guilty parties in the nuclear waste disposal problem -- which, of couse, as any jackass can see by now, is insoluble and sets up the planet for more and more radiation leaks and spills.

Du Pont's Deepwater manufacturing complex in southern New Jersey consists of over 400 buildings. It was first closed down, Colby states, in the 1920's by the U.S. Surgeon General,

"... for poisoning its workers.

Deep within its bowels, embedded in plants and buildings, uranium oxide residue left behind by Du Pont's involvement in producing the first atomic bombs for the Manhattan Project slowly penetrates the lives of thousands of workers, who are either unsuspecting or to terrified of unemployment to allow themselves to wonder. Other chemical poisonings of workers at Deepwater have already contributed to New Jersey's Salem County's having the highest bladder cancer death rate in the nation."

Du Pont owns the drug firm Endo Labs. Endo has sold a pain reliever Dipyrone (Valpirone in Latin America). This drug, outlawed for most uses in the United States, and all uses in Australia, can and does cause death by altering blood composition and attacking the bone marrow. However, no heavy warnings are displayed on the bottle in Latin America. Death is an acceptable end result.

Du Pont has fought health on all fronts when it's bad for business, and it frequently is.

Du Pont objected to the EPA lowering lead content in gasoline. It was and is a major manufacturer of leaded gasoline, despite solid evidence that lead causes brain damage.

It stonewalled widespread warnings about the danger of workers; exposure to low level radiation at its Savannah River nuclear plant, where they make all the weapons grade plutonium in the western hemisphere.

It stonewalled evidence of the plant's radioactive contamination of the Tuscaloosa, south Carolina, aquifer.

It denied the cancer causing effects of its Alpha-nepthylamine in dye and pigment manufacturing.

It held back employee medical data to stop a federal investigation of a Du Pont plant at Belle, West Virginia, where the cancer rate was high.

Its director of R&D, Dr. Ted Cairas, "successfully refuted" charges that the famous outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease actually came from leaks in the Bellevue Stafford Hotel's air-conditioning system -- which contained Du Pont's F-11 Flurocarbon refrigerant. F-11, which, with a tiny amount of heat, breaks down into phosgene, a nerve gas.

In 1980 Du Pont issued a confidential book on manipulating its own troublesome workers (and busting unions). This was part of its answer to revelations

that at its Chambers facility in Northern Delaware, carciogens like chlorobenzene, toluene, and D-dichlorobenzene were being wafted into the atmosphere;

that Du Pont's Newport pigments plant was poisoning the Potomac aquifer, "a major source of drinking water for Northern Delaware" (Colby);

that Newport and Cherry Island and Tybouts Corner and Llangollen were all being cited by a Congressional Report as dangerous landfills used by Du Pont. In 1992, ( the most recent year available for figures) Du Pont produced three quarters of billion pounds of toxic and/or carcinogenic industrial waste.

(Note: All these corporate industrial waste figures come from the astonishing report Toxic Wastes '95 issued by Inform Inc., 120 Wall Street, New York, New York 10005.)

Colby concludes that the inner-core of the Du Pont family -- about fifty men and women -- own assets worth 211 billion dollars (as of 1984!).

Is there any field in which this super-rich empire of companies has not caused toxic trouble? Colby writes:

"Du Pont in May 1977 confirmed that its own studies indicated 'excess cancer incidents and cancer mortality among workers exposed to Acrylonitrile at a Du Pont textile fibers and synthetic rubber; the chemical was also suspected by the Food and Drug Administration of migrating into beverages in plastic containers made with Acrylonitrile. The FDA has already closed three Monsanto plants that made such plastic bottles. Some 120,000 workers in the United States were exposed to Acrylonitrile manufacturing. When the number of consumers who used plastic bottles made with the chemical were also included, the figure ran into the millions with incalculable long-term effects."

The Crimes have never stopped. A 1964 (!) internal memo from Du Pont physiologist, G.J. Stoops, revealed that even then, sixteen years before Du Pont would face a suit by six of its workers suffering from terminal lung cancer -- asbestosis -- the company knew that its widespread use of asbestos insulation was a major health hazard.

Du Pont is chemicalization of life in this world. There is hardly a field of commercial toxicity in which Du Pont has not played a major role.

Although now, in 1996, we can try to say that all of Gerard Colby's revelations are "history", in fact the long-term effects of chemical lunacy live on. That is one of the points about chemical hazards -- they tend to persist.

Du Pont in 1988 decided it would phase out its world leading production of CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons), which are said to be the major source of depletion in the ozone layer. Not only has it continued to stonewall the issue while producing CFC's, it has put forward a likely successor to this compound, HFC-134A is in part made out of CFC's and in addition produces carbon tetrachloride, a poison, as a byproduct.

Karen Lohr, a spokesperson for Ozone Action, told reporter Beth Burrows in her fall 1993 Boycott Quarterly article on Du Pont, ". . . Du Pont announced on March 8, 1993, that they plan to continue to produce and profit from ozone destroying chemicals until 2030. They will only do a partial halt of manufacturing CFC's, having agreed only to end production in developed countries."

In a ten-year fiasco and tragedy (1985-1995), Du Pont set out to build a nylon factory in Goa, India. Du Pont, to address Bhopal-like concerns of local people, placed an ad in a Goa newspaper which said, "We will not handle, use, sell, transport or dispose of a product unless we can do it in a environmentally sound manner."

Of couse, Du Pont had already made an ironclad pact with its Indian subsidiary that any damage claims resulting from a toxic incident at the Goa plant would be settled entirely at the local level with no money drain on the parent company.

Then Goa activists discovered a Du Pont memo form the U.S. to its Goan company. The memo admitted that ground water around the new plant, waste water from manufacturing, recycling processes and air quality were all issues up for grabs -- safegauards were not up to proper standards.

Four months of confrontations at the plant with local police ensued. In January 1995, the police fired into a crowd and killed a twenty-five year old man.

Du Pont decided to move the plant. It chose a new site near Madras. Opposition there is also building . . .

In the Multinational Monitor of October 1991, Jack Doyle writes in a story title "Du Pont's Disgraceful Deeds":

"Du Pont is the single largest corporate polluter in the United States. In 1989, the latest year for which data are available from the U.S. EPA, Du Pont and its subsidiaries reported discharging more than 348 million pounds of pollutants to land, air and water . . . Much of the company's current waste is disposed of by deep-well injection. Du Pont leads all other companies in the use of this technique, injecting 254.9 million pounds of toxic wastes into underground geologic formations in 1989 . . . but underground injection is an uncertain science at best . . . Thus far the U.S. GAO reports there have been at least 23 cases in which drinking water contaminations is known to have been caused by deep well injected oil and gas wastes.

"Du Pont has had operational problems with deep well injection . . . acid waste corrosion of well casings and weldings has . . . been reported at some of Du Pont's Ingleside Wells."

What other toxic products does Du Pont make? Their pharmaceutical operations are replete with them.

Du Pont Pharma Company manufactures several strong anti-cough medicines including Hycodan, a drug for the symptomatic relief of cough. The Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR) (note: all quotes on drug info are from the PDR) issues this warning: "may be habit-forming . . . can produce drug dependence of the morphine type." Adverse reactions include mental clouding, lethargy, dizziness, mood changes, vomiting, urethral spasm, respiratory depression.

Percocet and Percodan are two well-known pain killers. They can "produce dependence of the morphine type." Adverse reactions include dizziness and vomiting.

Revia is used in the "treatment" of alcohol dependence. "Its use in patients with active liver disease must be carefully considered in light of its hepatoxic effects . . . Patients should be warned of the risk of hepatic injury and advised to stop the use of Revia and seek medical attention if they experience symptoms of acute hepatitis".

Sinemet is used to treat Parkinson's disease (not a cure). Adverse reactions include involuntary movements, paranoid ideation, psycotic episodes, depression with or without development of suicidal tendencies, dementia, numbness, nightmares, abdominal pain, malignant melanoma, loss of hair, dark sweat, blurred vision, bizarre breathing patterns, and a life-threatening neurologic syndrome called NMS.

Symmetrel is used for the "prevention" and treatment of signs of infection by strains of influenza type A virus. Adverse reactions include suicide attempts, blurring of vision, sporadic incidents of the life-threatnening NMS (neurologic) syndrome. Upon dose reduction or withdrawal of the drug, nausea, dizziness and insomnia can occur.

Du Pont and Merck are partners in pharmaceutical research. Other researchers correctly linking these two megaliths may want to document the toxicity of the major drug output of Merck.

Du Pont makes Comforel pillows, comforters and mattress pads; the fibers Lycra, Dacron, Nomex and Tyvek; Teflon; refined petroleum products are sold under the brand names Conoco, Jet and Seca; Remington firearms products. A Du Pont fungicide Benlate destroyed wholesale growers ornamental plants in 1993. In August 1995, the case concluded. A federal judge determined that Du Pont had kept vital soil testing info from the growers. The judges in rendering a verdict against Du Pont to the tune of $115 million said, "Put in laypersons' terms, Du Pont cheated, . . . consciously, deliberately and with purpose."

In April, 1996, a U.S. family will go to court against Du Pont charging that their use of this same home fungicide Benlate caused their son to be born without eyes (see Multinational Monitor, December 1995).

Earlier in October 1995, two other Du Pont fungicides, Benomyl and Cardazim, became the focus of a court case filed in Florida. The lawyers representing families in Scotland are claiming extreme physical damage to their clients from these fungicides' use.

Dow

Number two in chemical sales in the U.S. Employees: 58,000. Sales: $20 billion. Headquarters: Midland, Michigan, U.S.

Dow, the manufacturer of Napalm and Agent Orange during Vietnam War, and now the target of a billion dollars worth of lawsuits over their highly destructive silicone breast implants, is partners with the drug firm Ely Lilly in Dow Elanco, a spinoff company that is the largest producer of insecticides and fungicides in the U.S.

Dow must have a magnetic attraction for severe defoliants. Having distanced itself from Agent Orange -- its partner Lilly now makes Tebuthiuron, an herbicide that kills soil so that no plants can grow on it in the future. Sounds like a weapon of war.

Of course Dow also tries to distance itself from dioxin (contained in tis Vietnam era Agent Orange), but Greenpeace reports that hugely produced chlorine based Dow products -- pesticides, solvents and PVC plastics -- are the single largest source in the world of dioxin today.

Dow owns Marion Merrell Dow (MMD), a major pharmaceutical house. Like all drug companies, whether you know it or not, the commercial output of MMD is chillingly toxic. Let's start there.

Examples:

MMD's vaginal supository AVC cream is used to treat candida albicans. The PDR states that there is no data available on the long term potential of AVR for causing cancer or birth defects, but "deaths associated with administration of oral sulfonamides (such as AVC) have reportedly occured form hypersensitivity reactions, agranulocytosis, aplastic anemia and other blood discrasias." . . . Comforting.

Bentyl, Dow's drug for irritable bowel syndrome, also has in the PDR listing "no known data" for long term potential carcinogenicity or birth defects, but "psychosis has been reported in sensitive individuals." There are also, the PDR says, reports of deaths from respiratory collapse.

Cardizem, the Dow drug for hypetension and angina, carries the PDR caution: "Worsening of congestive heart failure has been reported in patients with preexisting impairment of ventricular function."

Nothing could prepare a sane person for the PDR's description of Dow's Clomid, a drug that attempts to produce ovulatory stimulation so that pregnancy can occur in women for whom that would otherwise be unlikely.

Here is a partial list of Clomid's post-marketing adverse effects:

seizure

stroke

psychosis

cataracts

posterior vitreous detachment

arrhythmia

tachycardia

hepatitis

liver and breast and pituitary and ovarian and kidney and tongue and bladder cancer

brain abscess

tubal pregnancy

uterine hemorrhage

ovarian hemorrhage

In the babies born to the mothers taking Clomid, there have occurred:

neuroectodermal tumor

thyroid tumor

leukemia

abnormal bone development including skeletal malformations of the skull, face, nasal passages, jaw, hand, limb and foot joints

malformations of the anus, eye, lens, ear, lung, heart and genitalia

dwarfism

deafness

mental retardation

chromosomal disorders

neural tube defects

Lorelco, Dow's drug aimed at lowering cholesterol, has this ominous PDR caution: females should be warned not to become pregnant for at least six months after discontinuing Lorelco. Lorelco's adverse effects?

Gastrointestinal bleeding

vomiting

low hemoglobin

fetid sweat

impotency

anorexia

diminished sense of taste and smell.

Dow makes Norpramin, an antidepressant. The PDR states: "It is important that this drug be dispensed in the least possible quantities to depressed outpatients since suicide has been accomplished with this class of drug."

Some of the effects of Norpramin are:

both elevating and lowering of blood sugar levels

heart block, myocardial infarction, stroke

sudden death

hallucinations, delusions

tremors, ataxia, peripheral neuropathy, seizures

dilation of urinary tract

bone marrow depression

vomiting, black tongue, hepatitis

impotence, painful ejaculation, testicular swelling

weight gain or loss.

(Note: In these drug summaries I don't even bother to comment about the uniform unworkability of the drugs on the causes of the illnesses for which they are prescribed nor will I comment on a further danger: the effects of combining several drugs at once. Nor on the fact that OTHER non-toxic remedies and approaches to health would eliminate the need for these drugs and their poisonous effects.)

Dow makes Rifadin, a "semi-synthetic" antibiotic for the treatment of tuberculosis. The PDR comments, "Rifadin has been shown to produce liver dysfunction. Fatalities associated with jaundice have occurred in patients with (previous) liver disease." The PDR further issues a bizarre warning -- "Rifadin can cause the urine, feces, saliva, sputum, sweat, and tears to turn red-orange. "Permanent discoloration of soft contact lenses may occur."

The suggested Rifadin dosage for people with TB is 600mg a day for six to nine months. Yet the PDR gives this warning: "High doses of Rifadin greater than 600mg given once or twice a week have resulted in high incidence of adverse reactions, including leukopenia (abnormal decrease in white blood corpuscles), thrombocytopenia (abnormal decrease in blood platelets), acute hemolytic anemia, shock, renal failure."

Among Rifadin's other advese effects are anorexia, vomiting and menstrual disturbances.

I have tried in listing adverse effects to avoid dipping into the explicit PDR category "rare" and the category, "has been found to occur in less that 1% of people taking drug and vanishes upon discontinuing drug." That leaves the open categories of "general adverse effects" or "we don't really know how many people on the drug suffer from these effects" or the "these effects are reported to occur after drug is marketed to the public and there is no way to prove the effects are caused by the drug." I have relied for the most part on these three last categories.

Dow and Ely Lilly and Company of Indianapolis are partners in a corporation called Dow Elanco, one of the largest producers of agricultural chemicals in the world. As a 40 percent partner Lilly falls within the purview of Dow and so I have justifiably included its drug products under the umbrella of Dow in this section.

Lilly manufactures Heparin sodium (derived from the intestinal mucosa of pigs), a blood anticoagulant used to prevent clotting. Says the PDR, "hemorrhage can occur at virtually any site in patients receiving Heparin. Patients on the drug can develop an "irreversible aggregation of (blood) platelets . . . (which) may lead to gangrene of the extremities . . . (and) amputation, mycardial infarction, pulmonary emoblism, stroke and possibly death."

Lilly's Nalfon is an NSAID for (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug). Every year in the U.S. seven to eight thousand people die from the administration of NSAIDs and between 70,000 to 80,000 are hospitalized from their use.

Lilly's Prozac is the wildly popular "in" anti-depressant of the moment. Prior to its release, it was never tested on humans for longer than thirteen weeks. Prozac has been associated with suicidal and murderous behavior, and the dampening of sexual desire. Its other effects include insomnia, anxiety, and anorexia (in 9 percent of the patients in clinical trials). Fifteen percent of the 4,000 patients who received Prozac in pre-release clinical trials discontinued treatment due to "an adverse event."

Diethylstilbestrol, a Lilly drug, is a synthetic estrogenic substance used for breast cancer and prostate cancer (as a palliative only). The PDR states, "WARNING: USE OF ESTROGENS HAS BEEN REPORTED TO INCREASE THE RISK OF ENDOMETRIAL CARCINOMA. ESTROGENS SHOULD NOT BE USED DURING PREGNANCY. ITS USE MAY CAUSE SEVERE HARM TO THE FETUS. More PDR quotes on this drug:

"A recent study reported a two to threefold increase in the risk of gall bladder disease occuring in women receiving post-menstrual estrogen therapy . . . "

"In a large prospective clinical trial in men, large doses of estrogen . . . comparable to those used to treat cancer of the prostrate . . . have been shown to increase the risk of non-fatal myocardial infarction, pulmonary emobilism. . . "

Adverse reactions to diethylstilbestrol include breakthrough bleeding, spotting and change in menstrual flow; vomiting; cholestatic jaundice; hemorrhagic skin eruption; corneal curvature; and migraine.

All these effects for a cancer treatment that is admittedly only a palliative?

(Note: The January 28, 1994, Congressional Quarterly in its report, Regulating Pesticides, points out that pollutants in the environment are being found to contain estrogenic substances. And that several researchers have linked exposure to estrogens with cancer, including breast cancer. (Now read the above section the drug diethlystilbestrol again and if you mind isn't completely blown, check your breath on a mirror.)

The above list and description of medical drugs is certainly not meant to be all-inclusive vis-a-vis Dow. It is just a bitter sample. If you find yourself saying, "Well, even if these drugs have some horrible effects, the doctors who prescribe them must know what they're doing", consider that once people said exactly that about the U.S. corporations who were busy spilling poisonous chemicals into the rivers of this land. "They must know what they're doing. They would never . . ." But they did. And these corporations are manufacturing the kinds of medical drugs I've just been describing AND the industrial chemicals AND the pesticides. Wake up and smell the poisons!

Who could present a complete and specific portrait of Dow's yearly industrial wastes? Inform, Inc. (New York City) has done an analysis of quantity in its Toxics Watch 1995 report. It culls the top twenty corporations from a total of 10,840 parent companies in the U.S. Dow ranks sixth in "production-related toxic chemical wastes, carcinogens and ozone depleting chemicals . . .". How many pounds of waste are we talking about defecated by Dow into the world? 517.5 million pounds for 1992! Half a billion pounds.

Susan Cooper of the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides names Dow's pesticide Dursban as a serious creator of health problems: nausea, headaches, behavioral changes in children. She told the Multinational Monitor that at least one out of every two phone calls that her office takes about pesticide complaints concerns Dursban. The Pesticide Action Network states that Dow produced or sold three pesticides on their "Dirty Dozen" list before 1980. One of these DBCP, ordered to be phased out by the EPA, now shows up being sold by Dow to the Dole Corporation, which has used it on its banana plantations in Costa Rica. DBCP contaminated ground water for several thousand square miles in the California central valley and caused sterility in agricultural workers. Four other Dow agricultural chemicals, Gallant, Verdict, Gauntlet, and Tridal, banned by the EPA, have shown up in Africa, Latin America, Central America, Asia and Europe.

Beyond the products mentioned so far, what to boycott made by Dow?

Styrofoam labeled plastic products, agricutlural herbicides (Starane, Spike, Treflan), the soil fumigant Telone, and two insecticides, Dursban and Lorsban. It makes over-the-counter drugs: Norhistamine (cough), Cepacol, Gly-Oxide (antiseptic), Cepastat lozenges, Citrucel laxative, Delbrox (ear care), Gaviscon (antacid), the calcium supplement Os-Cal.

Household products include Ziploc Bags, Fantastik Cleaner, Handi-Wrap, Saran Wrap, Spray 'N Wash, Dow Bathroom Cleaner, Glass Plus Multi-Surface Cleaner, Smart Scrub, Ultra Yes laundry detergent, Vivid bleach and Style and Perma Soft hair products.

It should also be noted that Dow manufactures benzene, widely acknowledged as a carcinogen.

Of course, all this information is faxed and internetted around the world, people outside the U.S. will find the Dow subsidiaries in their countries and the products they make. In the U.S. the reference text The Directory of Multinationals is a good source for the names of these subsidiary corporations.

So to this point, you have much more than sufficient evidence of massive toxicity to justify a boycott of Dow. You can also see that boycotting their products is in some cases awkward, because wholesalers and companies, not individuals, are Dow's customers. More reason to press disinvestment, making it unconscionable to hold stock of this company.

We welcome additions and more complete descriptions of products entered by other researchers. But don't accept any softening of the boycott stance or baloney about how Dow is improving its environmental responsibility. Despite changes, these corporations are toxic from top to bottom. Do you negotiate with them? Let other groups do that. This is a global educational campaign to isolate the biggest chemical companies from the rest of us who want a world we can live in. Expose the naked truth. Poison is poison.

Monsanto

Monsanto, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, employs 45,000 people and peddles over eight billion dollars a year in chemical products to the planet. Its Roundup is the world's largest selling herbicide. Monsanto owns the drug firm G.D. Searle and Company, a major phramceutical supplier. Add to this branches which manufacture a whole range of fibers, plastics, resins, rubber and metallised materials and you have a giant.

Monsanto has been under great heat for some time for their production of NutraSweet and the genetically engineered BGH (Bovine Growth Hormone). Ongoing American boycotts launched out of Atlanta and Hillsboro, Wisconsin, are taking their toll. (Family farm Defenders, P.O. Box 581, Hillsboro, Wisconsin, 54634, for BGH; and Betty Martini, 9270 River Club Parkway Duluth, Georiga 30097, 770 242-2599, for NutraSweet.) Another Monsanto boycott is being run by Pure Dairy Commission, RR 2, Box 191, New Auburn WI 54757.

The U.S. FDA, as of April 20, 1995, has reported 10,386 volunteered consumer complaints stemming from NutraSweet, aka Equal (aspartame). Among the symptoms listed are blindness seizures, memory loss, loss of limb control, slurred speech, skin lesions, extremity numbness, depression, mood swings, anxiety attacks, coma and death.

Aspartame is a food addititve 180 to 200 times sweeter than sugar. Absorbed very quickly into the bloodstream it metabolizes into six to eight byproducts including methyl alcohol and the class A carcinogen, formaldehyde. At least a hundred million Americans consume products containing NutraSweet (e.g., certain Coca Cola and Pepsi drinks, Children's Tylenol Chewable Tablets, Flintstones Complete Children's Chewable Vitamins, Metamucil Sugarfree, Breath Savers, Wrigley's Extra Sugar Free Gum, Kellogg's All Bran, Twin Labs Endurance Quick fix Powder, Calcilyte).

The early research history of aspartame was plagued with deception. Animal studies were faked (S.O.P. for the drug industry), on top of the fact that even real animal data would have had no provable crossover to humans. The resulting FDA approval of aspartame paved the way for disaster.

H.J. Roberts, M.D., a diabetes specialist and member of the American Diabetes Association, states that aspartame brings on clinical diabetes and causes convulsions.

Ralph G. Walton's aspartame study published in Biological Psychiatry (1993 34:13-17), led him to conclude "individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener; its use in this population should be discouraged." On another occasion Walton was much more blunt: "I know it (aspartame) causes seizures. I'm convinced also that it definitely causes behavioral changes. I'm very angry that this substance is on the market. I personally question the reliability and validity of any studies funded by the NutraSweet Company."

A dozen airplane magazines, including Flying Safety, published by the U.S. Air Force, have issued warnings about seizures and vertigo among pilots ingesting aspartame.

And all this is just the tip of the iceberg on this product.

Monsanto's BGH, the new growth hormone now injected into cows all over the U.S. to make them produce more milk, is another debacle. 93 percent of the nations's dairy farmers refuse to use the product. In Europe BGH is banned, at least until the year 2000. Why? Because this hormone makes cows sick -- leading to treatment with high levels of antibiotics which along with pus then find their way into the milk supply. reports of serious health and reproductive problems among U.S. cows have shot up since February 1995. Meanwhile Monsanto has tried to intimidate all those who label their milk products BGH-free. The corporation has actually brought lawsuits against such farmers and, through a related organization, has sued the state of Vermont over its permissive attitude toward BGH labeling. This obvious encroachement on the First Amendment is, of course, outrageous, but the Department of Justice does nothing to stop it.

Dr. Samuel Epstein, a well known public health advocate and professor of environmental medicine, states that "cell stimulating growth factors" such as BGH could lead to breast cancer in humans and bring about premature growth in babies. Monsanto, of course, cannot produce any safety data vis-a-vis humans because BGH is a crapshoot using million of people as experimental subjects.

More toxicity in its products? Of course. In 1985, not long before Monsanto would be exposed for having rigged a dioxin study in its favor (it made Agent Orange), the Pesticide Action Network named Monsanto's insecticied Parathion as one of the dirtiest dozen pesticides used around the world. Multinational Monitor states that Parathion "may be responsible for half the world's pesticide poisonings and 80 pecent of those in central America." Monsanto stopped making Parathion in 1986, claiming "market considerations".

Monsanto's herbicide Butachlor, marketed in foreigh countries as Machete and Lambast, has never been permanently approved by the EPA. Adverse effects of the chemical include weight loss, weight changes in internal organs, reduced brain size together with lesions. Butachlor, reports Multinational Monitor, can be found in the U.S. food supply. It's used in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Venezuela, which means that up to 97 percent of our rice imports could contain it.

Monsanto Lasso is the largest selling herbicide in the U.S. Lasso is everywhere on corn and soybeans. Only through extreme pressure on the EPA was Monsanto able to keep the compound on the market. EPA had already called Lasso "a probable carcinogen".

The only U.S. producer of the notorious PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) since 1929, Monsanto was forced to stop making this carcinogen in 1977 after having spread it (1.4 billion pounds) into every corner of America's land, water and human and animal bodies. By 1990, every trout and salmon over a foot long in the Great Lakes was contaminated with PCBs.

Monsanto is a leader in the biotech revolution that threatens to engineeer the genes of every food crop on the planet. This year (1996) Monsanto will introduce its altered soybean to the world of commerce. The bean is altered to withstand, without keeling over, higher levels of Monsanto's chemical herbicide Roundup. You will ingest these higher levels of Roundup.

Monsanto now owns 49.9 percent of Calgene, the maker of the Flavr Savr tomato engineered for longer shelf life. Soon to come from the parent company? Varieties of canola, cotton, maize sugar beets and rapeseed oil, all of which will also tolerate higher level of Roundup, and pass the poison on to you.

The Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C. has placed Monsanto at the top of its "dirty sixteen" companies and universities which are trying to extend the legal patenting of life forms. In response to this charge, an unruffled Monsanto spokesman said that the company puts 120 million dollars a year into biotech research and development, and there are no problems.

As if all this weren't enough, Monsanto's drug company, G.D. Searle, continues to turn out its share of toxic compounds for ingestion, as an adjunct to eating Monsanto pesticide. Examples:

Daypro, an NSAID for arthritis -- NSAIDS, as mentioned above, routinely cause 7,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and 70-80,000 hospitalizations.

Demulen, an oral contraceptive, is an estrogenic compound. Very reassuring at a time when environmental scientists are linking estrogenic pollutants to breast cancer.

Flagyl, an oral synthetic antiprotozoal and antibacterial, can cause convulsive seizures, peripheral neuropathy, a significant lessening of white blood corpuscles, and can make candida infections worse.

Kerlone for "management of hypertension" can contribute to cardiac failure.

Lomotil, the anti-diarrhea drug, has a number of adverse effects including tachycardia, vomiting, depression, numbness of extremities and pancreatitis.

A 1991 report by the Foundation for Advancements in Science and Education indicates that Monsanto stands at the forefront of those companies who ship hazardous and potentially carcinogenic pesticides out of the country. For example, customs records for the period March to May 1990 reveal that a large anonymous St. Louis shipper sent over 21 million pounds -- over 116 tons every day -- of these pesticides out of the U.S. There is only one shipper of pesticides in St. Louis and that is Monsanto.

Beyond Searle's pharmaceuticals here is a list of Monsanto products to boycott:

NutraSweet, Equal, BGH (aka rBGH, rBST, Posilac), Simplese (an artificial butter fat), Simple Pleasures Frozen Dairy Desserts, Salad Dressing and Mayonnaise;

the artificial fibers Astroturf and Wear Dated Carpets;

the garden herbicides Roundup and Dimension;

agricultural chemicals: Lasso, Harness Plus, Far Go, Avauer, Machete, Bronco, Bullet, Cropstar GB, Freedom, Landmaster BW, Micro-Tech Partner, Ram Rod, Accord, Buckle, Fallow Master, Lariat, Rodeo;

the feed supplement and preservative Alimet;

the Flavr Savr tomato.

The Family Farm Defenders Monsanto Boycott says: "Be alert for dozens of new Monsanto genetically engineered plants including corn, potatoes and soybeans."

Clearly, as with all engineered foods, no long-term human studies will be done. The USFDA will automatically assume the gene insertion is safe for people and the subsequent migration of these genes into another plant species will have no untoward effect on the environment. In other words, the planet is a test tube.

Bayer, Imperial Chemical Industies, Hoechst, Rhone Poulenc, Novartis

These are the European counterparts of the big three American chemical poisoners described above. Bayer is the biggest of the eight. It is established that Bayer, Rhone Poulenc, Hoechst, and Novartis do business in the U.S. as pharmaceutical companies. They, of course, produce toxic drugs for human consumption. That is a given, just as it is a given that carcinogenicity can be found in industrial and agricultural chemicals. (Example: In 1989 Novartis' epilepsy drug Tegretol was found to cause an unexpectedly high rate of birth defects.)

I have been able to put together a partial list, beyond the pharmaceuticals, of products to be boycotted for Bayer and Novartis.

Bayer makes:

Alkaseltzer

One-A-Day Vitamins

Flintstone Chewable Vitamins

SOS Scouring Pads

Bugs Bunny Vitamins

Cutter insect repellent

Of course, there is Bayer aspirin too, which by arrangement is marketed by another firm in the U.S., but it should also be boycotted.

Novartis in the U.S. sells:

Funk Seeds Products

Softcolor and Vision Care contact lenses

Nupercaine Ointment

Privine Nasal Spray

Doan's Pills

Fiberall Laxative

Sunkist Vitamins

the diet "aid" Accutrim and Ten-K, a potassium supplement.

From Los Angeles it's not possible to assemble a complete portrait of the European companies. All have a chilling record of toxic output. That much is clear. All are busy genetically engineering food crops to withstand higher levels of pesticide and herbicide. I am hoping that circulating this case file on the American big three, friends in Europe will use the info and supply us in LA with their research on the other five megaliths.

Our goal as humans has to be a straightforward one. Through a long-term publicity campaign, using all channels of info possible, isolate these companies (and others like them) as pariahs, as criminals standing outside community and civilization by any definition. Isolate these companies as entities no one wants to do business with on any level. That is the only lasting response to their toxic actions. If you think this is too strong and impolite a campaign, talk to some of the women who are suing Dow for promoting silicone implants as safe.

I'll close with two remarks: Boycotting television in your own home is a great place to start in clearing up your head for this work.

And think about this story. It involves Bayer, the largest chemical company in the world. Bayer and Hoechst were original members of the Nazi IG Farben cartel. During the Second World War Farben built a rubber and oil plant complex at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The inmates worked as slave labor for Farben. When they were too weak to work they were killed in chambers -- where Zyklon B gas was used. Farben made Zyklon B. On July 29, 1948, sentences for mass murder and slavery were handed down at the Nuremberg trials to twelve Farben executives. The longest sentence dealt out was to Dr. Fritz ter Meer, a top executive and scientist on the Farben managing board. Seven years. Seven years.

Flash forward to August 1, 1963. IG Farben, far from being chopped to ribbons, had a new life in Germany as the three separate and giant corporations which had once together formed its core: Bayer, Hoechst, and BASF. On this August 1 date Bayer celebrated its 100th anniversary at the Cologne fairgrounds -- a major event replete with philharmonic Handel and Wagner. The opening speech was delivered by, yes, Dr. Fritz ter Meer, now not only out of prison but -- a mass murderer -- elevated to the position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bayer.

Astonishing

Of course, several texts, in tracing IG Farben's worldwide corporate connections at its high-water mark (1941), name seven of the eight corporations on this boycott list (excepting Rhone-Poulenc, for the moment) as having major ties to the Nazi cartel.

Wars come and wars go, but apparently destruction by toxicity remains and it must be ended by world demand. The alternative is a wasting human population, its numbers vastly reduced, and a further poisoned planet.