Anniston's (Monsanto) nightmare lingers on

[nosmokes]

This may seem like old news but I have a personal connection to Anniston from a couple of summers spent there when it was the home of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. And I was quite the anomaly, being an alabama kid but not from Anniston and not a redneck and not gay but into theatre.So it freaked all the out of town actors and designers and such when I *discovered* a little bbq shack in the black part of town, definitely on the wrong side of the tracks and definitely not the kind of place the patrons of the shakespeare festival had been pointing them to as where to go for bbq. It's the kind of place you find with your nose. and you know you're in the right place when you see a older black gentleman with white hair who's either rail thin or overweight in a dirty sauce stained apron.Now I'm fully aware of how racist this may sound, but i've eaten a lot of cue in my time and w/o a doubt the best i've ever eaten had those things in common. so sue me. anyhow,I found this little joint that really was a ramshackle place, a 15 or 20 year old single wide trailer attached to a 2 or 3 bedroom shack that was leaning at a good 15˚angle with folding card tables and lawn chairs for seating and an old church pew along one wall.The menu was standard meat and three and ribs were always one of the meat choices. The actors and other folks loved the place- you couldn't not love it. and it became a destination at least three times a week. the neighborhood didn't know what to make of white folks suddenly coming around, but Stirling loved it and the money. and because the actors from the shakespeare started going there some of the more open town residents started crossing the train tracks (yes, it literally was on the wrong side of the tracks) and started patronising Stirling's bar-b-que.

But it was Stirling and his people that Monsanto were poisoning and writing off as so much garbage. And Stirling and his family welcomed me and welcomed all the other white folks into his place and treated us just like family, with service and attention that went far beyond any sort of customer/provider relationship. And all the while we were part of a system that was deliberately killing him and those he held dear.

And now I'm supposed to trust Monsanto with GMOs and my food supply? I'm supposed to believe that their tests are run in an ethical and complete manner and that when they find something that may prove dangerous to the environment or human health Monsanto will openly report that result to the FDA? We have a saying at the race track. The best indicator of future performance is previous performance. Monsanto can kiss my everlovin lily white ass.

original-gmwatch

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Anniston's nightmare lingers on (12/6/2007)

GM Watch comment: The following article shows the continuing impact on the lives of residents in Anniston, Alabama of Monsanto's 40+ years of dumping of PCB-contaminated wastewater into areas where residents could be directly exposed to it.

The wastewater left the plant at the edge of town before entering streams, ditches and landfills in the mostly black west end of town. During heavy rains the ditches and landfills flooded, sending the wastewater into homes and contaminating soil in yards (gardens), unleashing a toxic nightmare onto the black homeowners.

The nightmare continues even during the cleanup as residents could still be inhaling PCB-contaminated dust as the waste is transferred from backyards to nearby landfills, potentially increasing the spread of the high levels of PCB pollution.

What's so revealing, though, about Anniston is not just the scale of the pollution created by Monsanto but the conspiracy of silence that was exposed during the 2002 court case that led to massive damages against the corporation.

As the Washington Post reported, "thousands of pages of Monsanto documents - many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" - show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew." (Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution, PCBs Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever Told)

According to the article:
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complete article including links to related sources here

[midnight]

1. Isn't just amazing how certain company's branch out from

chemicals to food. I get what you mean about the trust issue. Very easy to understand that point of view. What does just amaze me though is the number of healthy people we have. After reading your post, and the munitions dumps on both sides of the country, all I can think of is how many lucky people are born alright.

[fed-up]

2. I just read "Laying Waste- The Poisoning of America by Toxic Chemicals"-1981

by Michael Brown -covers Love Canal and other toxic dumping and what little was done about these messes.

http://used.addall.com/SuperRare/submitRare.cgi?author=&title=laying+waste&keyword=&isbn=&order=PRICE&ordering=ASC&dispCurr=USD&binding=Softcover&min=&max=&timeout=20&match=Y&store=Abebooks&store=AbebooksDE&store=AbebooksFR&store=AbebooksUK&store=Alibris&store=Amazon&store=AmazonCA&store=AmazonUK&store=AmazonDE&store=AmazonFR&store=Antiqbook&store=Biblio&store=Biblion&store=Bibliophile&store=Bibliopoly&store=Booksandcollectibles&store=Half&store=ILAB&store=LivreRareBook&store=Maremagnum&store=Powells&store=Strandbooks&store=Tomfolio&store=ZVAB

and nothing done/not done by any chemical company, Public Health Department or the EPA surprises me.

Little has changed.

Only problem is that consumers are buying more plastics (any petroleum product), fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides), pharmeceuticals etc. The waste products and the products themselves must go somewhere.

At some point consumers have to take responsibility for buying the crap from these companies knowing full well that any toxins from manufacturing or disposal are most likely not properly taken care of. And what is properly taken care of??? Stuffed in a cave, buried underground, burned, tossed into a river, creek, streambed???

We have to quit consuming so much...

Our air, water and soil are fouled beyond belief.....

[nosmokes]

3. "We have to quit consuming so much"- Word.

[truedelphi]

4. Monsanto is the source of so many people's nightmares

RoundUp sprayed everywhere, with its hidden ingredients more deadly than the lymphoma-causing glyphosate that so many say is "safe"

Monsanto with its genetically modified food - there is simply no way to avoid it if you eat processed foods - the corn with its Bt killing the butterflies, the wheat now modified, the long grain rice (I understand that the short grained organic rice still may be free of GMO contamination)

And witht he political "need" that calls for the destruction of coca plants in Colombia and opium crops in Afghanistan, we will never have legalized marijuana