The Devil We Know-the chemistry of a cover up – DVD/documentary (Stephanie Soechtig):
“In 1945, Dupont began making Teflon.
Today, one of the chemicals used to make it is in the blood of 99% of all Americans.“
People give me trouble for reviling America. As if acknowledging the world’s greatest, most prolific & repeated offender somehow transcribes into a preemptive action rather than the stark, fact-stacked verisimilitude. This particular film & incident demonstrates the countries leadership in the realms of utter, unrivaled abhorrence, & although the entire world suffers from the poisonous results, its Americans themselves that are suffering at the forefront of this immeasurable evil, biological danger & enduring physical harm.
The picture also emphatically underlines how completely useless, unfitting & supremely insufficient the current legal & political system is for dealing with the exponential crimes & criminal entities (the chemical companies) that perpetrate or threaten these indefinably heinous atrocities. The system or ostensibly ‘preventative’ framework itself becomes a guilty accessory to the super-crime for its complete & utter gross inadequacy.
Forget this review, go & watch the documentary, you need this information urgently & in full. For now/here, & for the purpose of the article, the essence is that ginormous chemical multinational Dupont has been mass manufacturing an extremely harmful chemical, “C-8” (there will be many others), for the production of Teflon, for use in a profusion commercial products. DUPONT WERE ACUTELY & ENTIRELY AWARE OF THE COMPOUNDS TOXICITY & AND MALIGNANT EFFECTS through their own tests & scientific studies, but decided to totally ignore & conceal the results. This meant mass-market roll-out to the general public, exposing factory workers to hazardous chemicals during processing, expelling airborne chemicals & probably the greatest offense – discharging waste water replete with C8 (& god knows what else) into local rivers unabated. Human & animal birth defects, illness, cancer & death ensue. One of the central characters in the documentary was born with serious facial deformities (his mother worked at the plant), which would require more than 30 stints of surgery before the age of five. Toxic water spewed into local farmer Wilburr Tennant’s land (Dupont were leasing part of his estate to host their processing plant) resulting in the deaths of surrounding wildlife, deer, fish & eventually his entire heard of cattle after drinking from the contaminated stream. He was assured everything was fine, even by local authorities who were obviously in concurrence with Dupont, but the reality on the ground was incompatible with the official dismissal – so he began filming. Cut to the exposure when the companies criminal conspiracy was eventually ousted & a lawsuit was activated against Dupont. The internal records of the company were obtained, & sure enough, there it was – full knowledge, full understanding, intentional cover-up with all the trimmings. It included the line, that harks similarities to Zuckerberg’s famous “dumb fucks” comment, by one of the company’s lawyers Bernard J Reilly in response to the farmer taking his video documentation & evidence to the authorities – “fuck him”.
Staggeringly, unthinkably, implausibly, the company is allowed to ‘settle’ (an undisclosed sum) & continue. This is the travesty of contemporary American law, where the greatest offenses possible are treated with this supernatural lenience & irregular exceptionalism that operates through the corporate legal structure, a kind of mega indemnity that insulates the perpetrator like some cursed talisman. America is a country that regularly administers & executes a death penalty on its convicted, & yet, the worst, largest & severest criminals always completely eschew this cachet – despite being the worthiest of candidates for the judgement. These industrialized death cults, toxifying, infecting, deforming, killing, afflicting cancer, sickness, body disorders & immune-system diseases, illness, fertility & reproductive dysfunction, brain & cognitive damage & disruption along with assaults on health & biological welfare – with potentially irreversible besiegement (these fundamentally unnatural chemicals don’t break down with heat, cold or natural decomposition & there longevity appears to be undetermined) operate with esteem, legitimation & orthodoxy in America’s commercial market & societal landscape, raking in billions in profit year after year after year. Our militaries & law enforcement institutions, that train, exist & bare arms for the nation & its inhabiting populations ‘protection’ & ‘safety’ need to be called into this equation. When, & for what reasons do you feel “war” can be justly & appropriately waged? What degree of threat threshold needs to be determined for this resort to be decisively effected? What definition does it rest on? For me, these entities, the giant polluting monoliths, of the chemical & petroleum sector more than anything, are probably the number one emergency that demands eliminatory action for the sake of all living things (literally).
The documentary goes on to get even more implausible & insane, with the actions of 3M & Dupont & the reaction of the country & its legal authorities when the perpetrators are ‘caught’.
Often, when analyzing these ‘Anti Life” abominations & the treatment & exception they are granted within our society, I think that there is some other agenda, objective or intention in their purpose & operation….something away from profit & money….something way’ way’ way more sinister, fell & sick, & something that the entire species needs to identify, determine & act against decisively & severely before it is too late. Who are these freaks? Why do they do it? why is the response consistently so superficial despite the ramifications being so grave?
An indescribably shocking documentary that confirms the magnitude of evil we are confronting.
Stephanie Soechtig, Atlas Films, 2018