LYING, CHEATING , DOUBLE DEALING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

I've often told my wife that while there are indeed very rare, once in a lifetime screwballs out there (Olsen, Wortman, Dahmer, Manson etc.) the real threat is government murder, mayhem and incompetence. Thalidomide, DDT, Agent Orange, Vietnam, Iraq, Chile, aboriginal genocide, state sanctioned police violence and brutality against Blacks, rubber industry cancer clusters ignored by provincial governments, asbestos mining and use, government sanctioned Rawandan massacres, Serbia, Hitler's Germany (Jewish "solution"), Syrian and Egyptian attacks on citizens, etc. etc. etc.. .................................................................................................................. A few years back I was shocked to learn of 2,4,-D & 2,4,5,-T (i.e. Agent Orange) use in Gagetown, New Brunswick, and in Ontario along power lines, railroad right of ways and highways even in southern Ontario. It all made zero sense as our authorities were well aware of scientific evidence indicating the lethality of those two chemicals to so much more than broadleaf weeds. Aquatic ecosystems, wildlife, domestic animals, crops and human beings were devastated by their indiscriminate use. .................................................................................................... Well I have just learned about what a sham democracy has been for decades in our southern neighbour, the United States. This is not to remotely suggest that Canadian democracy is anything to brag about because it isn't. Our Canadian politicians do not respond to honesty, scientific facts or simply doing the right thing. Oh no, they pause, look around carefully, smell the prevailing winds and calculate who will be offended by their doing the right thing. What lobby, what powerful vested interests might lose a little to end injustice or sufferring to many that they are causing. Then our gutless wonder politicians will stand up on their hind legs for a moment and mouth platitudes that sound good but accomplish nothing because the status quo is the way it is for the specific benefit of the priveleged in our society. The very same priveleged who both donate to parties (Liberal & Conservative) and also lobby them for self-serving reasons. .................................................................................................................... The U.S. Forestry Service in the late 1970s desperately needed their senior management to spend some quality time in jails. Oh no the U.S. justice system was hell on wheels for jailing dope and drug users and dealers, especially if they were coloured, but actually jailing government bureaucrats following orders from the very same government authorities just couldn't happen. So what if those government authorizations made people sick. So what if those government authorizations killed both wildlife and domestic farm animals. So what if human beings sufferred permanent health damage including cancers from U.S. Forestry actions. Most importantly the wealthy and influential Forestry companies were not negatively affected for five minutes while other citizens, their families including children and the local environments were devastrated all in the name of maintaining profits. That's what matterred to those a..holes first, last and always. ................................................................................................. From the mid 1970s on the U.S. Forestry Service sprayed rural and heavily forested Oregon with 2,4,-D and 2,4,5-T. This included farms, ranches, residential homes, barns, domestic animals, men, women, children, streams and rivers. Fish, frogs, crayfish, ducks, deer, chickens, dogs, and most likely human beings as well died. So as the U.S. authorities already knew of the effects of the dioxin in Agent Orange killing and maiming in Vietnam, did they immediately stop spraying when advised of the disasters in Oregon? Hell no, the forestry companies wouldn't hear of it. Money was at stake. It took literally years of legal action by the victims and others to even put a dent in the spraying. The politicians as usual, followed suit, in their usual ways. They banned this and prohibited that, all subject to a myriad of conditions including rights to appeal by chemical companies that allowed still more spraying for even more years while the lawyers got rich winding it all through the courts for even longer. ................................................................................................. Yes folks money talks and people die, even in democracies, while the money talks.