East London News A Force for the community…
As the Olympics approaches, the campaign against Games sponsor Dow Chemicals continues, with the Indian team considering taking protest action short of a team boycott at the event. The latest news is that Len Aldis of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society (pictured on a recent visit to Vietnam) has written an open letter to the members of the London Olympic Organising Committee, which is printed below.
AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL COMMITTEE MEMBERS OF THE LONDON OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC GAMES
Lord Coe (Chair); Sir Keith Mills (Deputy Chair); HRH the Princess Royal; Charles Allen; Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari; Sir Phillip Craven; Paul Deighton, Chief Exe; Jonathan Edwards; Tony Hall; Andrew Hunt; Justin King; Stephen Lovegrove; Adam Penglly; Tim Reddish; Lord Moynihan; Sir Craig Reedie; Martin Stewart; Sir Robin Wales (Mayor of Newham); Neil Wood.
In a few weeks, unless you take action, the Olympic Stadium will have been surrounded by a wrap comprising 336 giant panels made by a company responsible for deaths of many thousands, including thousands of babies that died in their mother’s womb. Responsible for the deaths of many more thousands of those that lived for just a few months.
That company is Dow Chemical, whose record was known to each and everyone of you through the many court cases it has had brought against them in the United States for disposing of tonnes of highly toxic waste into rivers and lakes near its plants. For lawsuits brought by American Vietnam Veterans and Vietnamese suffering from the effects of Agent Orange.
But let me remind each of you, the biggest crime of Dow Chemical was its part, along with 35 other U.S. Chemical Companies, headed by Monsanto, in manufacturing Agent Orange used with devastating effect on Southern Vietnam for a period of TEN-YEARS, yes, TEN-YEARS. 80 million litres of the chemical was sprayed over the forests, crops, hamlets and the PEOPLE themselves, from August 1961 to 1971, resulting in the deaths mentioned above.
Through the use of Agent Orange, Dow Chemical and the others have left a legacy that today in Vietnam affects four million. It has also entered into the fourth generation. From my first visit in 1989 and each year since, I have met and seen many of these tragic victims, of all ages, from new born babies that are minus feet and sometimes hand, young children suffering from water on the brain, and their heads four-times the normal size where their illness is slowly crushing the brain that ends in death.
I have met with youngsters minus a limb, some minus two; some will be confined to a bed or wheelchair for the rest of their lives unable to fend for themselves. In Dong Nai I met a mother and her two daughters both unable to move or speak but just lay on their bed, the mother looks after them and their needs and has done so for 42 years, the age of her eldest daughter, the other daughter is 36 years. I could describe more of the people I have met over the past 22 years. But what angers me more is when I see children affected that were born after the spraying stopped in 1971 and long after the ward ended in 1975.
This is what Dow Chemicals has done to the people of Vietnam, and each of you have seemed fit to support the appointment of the company to be a sponsor of the Games that opens in London on 27th July despite the many objections made by people from a number of countries.
Shame on you all.
Len Aldis. Secretary
•For further information on the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, visit www.lenaldis.co.uk.
Well done Len! Len is also the Chairman of the ‘Agent Orange Action Group’. Visit us at aoag.org for further information.
Wonderful museum! Nice to see and apreciate for many days.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march312012/vietnam-letter.php
Mar-31-2012 13:11
AN OPEN LETTER: To Mr Nguyen Danh Thai, Chairman and members of the Olympic & Paralympic Committee of Vietnam
Len Aldis for Salem-News.com
Why has the Olympic Committee of Vietnam remained silent on the issue of Dow Chemicals involvement with the Olympics?
Vietnam’s decision to associate with Monsanto makes for an extremely introverted problem in the world today.
(LONDON) – The following is an Open Letter by Len Aldis, who served as Secretary, for the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, and Chairman, for the Agent Orange Action Group.
The letter is to Mr Nguyen Danh Thai, Chairman and members of the Olympic & Paralympic Committee of Vietnam.
Dear Mr Nguyen Danh Thai,
In a few weeks time from date of this letter, athletes from many countries will be preparing to make their way to my country to take part in both of these international Games. On behalf of the BVFS we welcome them all and in particular those from Vietnam and hope that they will take the opportunity to meet with athletes from many other countries and in so doing establish links of friendship and understanding, the prime aim in my view, of the Olympics.
But I raise with you as I did when I wrote to you in September and later emailed you – unfortunately I have yet to receive a reply – the news that Dow Chemical, has been made a sponsor of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, and other Olympic Games until 2020.
In August last year while in Hanoi attending the International conference held by VAVA on the 50th anniversary of the use of Agent Orange on Vietnam, I received the news that Dow Chemicals, one of the companies that manufactured Agent Orange and incidentally Napalm, had been made a sponsor of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, further they had been given a £7 million pound contract to surround the Olympic Stadium with 336 giant panels for advertisements including their Logo. Due to pressure by many, they have agreed to drop their logo. However, that is not enough, the contract itself must.be cancelled.
I need not inform you or your committee of the devastating effect that the 80 million litres of Agent Orange/Dioxin sprayed on Southern Vietnam in a ten-year period from 1961, had on the people, forests and land of your country, as well as the horrific injuries and destruction that Napalm caused. The legacy that Agent Orange brought to the people of Vietnam is on record and the present four million affected today are a living record of that legacy. The photograph of the young Vietnamese girl Kim running naked down a road in Vietnam with her skin burning with Napalm remains in the memory of millions who saw her. The conjoined twins Duc and Viet is another, and there are many other photographs I could show you.
In my yearly visits to Vietnam since 1989 I have travelled to many provinces, met and spoken to numerous victims of Agent Orange, at times it has been a heart-breaking experience for me especially when the victims are children and youngsters, they have become my friends and I feel duty bound to speak on their behalf at Dow Chemical being made a sponsor of the Olympic Games.
The effects of Agent Orange has now entered into the fourth generation and so why, I ask myself, why has the Olympic Committee of Vietnam remained silent on the issue of Dow Chemicals involvement with the Olympics? When athletes from America, Canada and Indian, have protested at Dow being involved and called on their respective Olympic committee’s to demand that Dow Chemical be dropped as a sponsor. The open letter to all athletes by the Canadian and American swimmers was a brilliant exposure of the crimes committed by Dow, yet the country on which Agent Orange was used over a period of TEN-YEARS remains SILENT…
Individuals, organisations including those who supported Vietnam during the war and know the crimes committed by Dow Chemical have added their support by writing to the International Olympic and the London Olympic Committee calling for Dow Chemical to be dropped as a sponsor of the Games. Yet your committee remains SILENT.
Only a few weeks ago, I took a letter from Mr Nguyen Van Rinh, a member of Vietnam’s National Assembly and also President of Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA), to the office of Lord Coe, Chairman of the London Olympic Committee, the letter added his voice to those of all the Vietnamese suffering from Agent Orange in calling for Dow Chemical to be dropped as a sponsor of the Games. Yet, the voice of your committee remains SILENT.
Mr Nguyen Danh Thai, this is no time to be silent, this is the time for action and for your committee to say in a loud clear voice: “We speak on behalf of the four million Vietnamese suffering today from Agent Orange, and all others from other lands also affected, when we demand that Dow Chemical must not continue as a sponsor of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. Justice demands this.”
Yours in friendship
Len Aldis. Secretary
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april072012/len-aldis-ms.php
Apr-07-2012 19:07
‘Len Aldis vs. Dow Chemical’
Mark Shapiro for Salem-News.com
Victims have suffered four generations as companies like Dow Chemical look to hide the facts and bury the truth in search of more profit…
Len Aldis and his nemesis
(LONDON) – Many of you have expressed an interest in the current controversy surrounding Dow Chemical Sponsorship of the 2012 Olympics. Len Aldis has received substantial worldwide support for his campaign to stop Dow from wrapping the Olympic Stadium with 336 panels of corporate advertising.
Dow Chemical was a major responsible party involved in the American Agent Orange campaign against the people of Vietnam. The front page of Len’s website contains the correspondence Len has written in support of the millions of Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. I urge you to forward this material to colleagues and the media.
It’s ‘business as usual’ for the United States as they move on from one tragic war to another. But we must not forget the terrible tragedy of the American War in Vietnam and the Victims who through four generations continue to suffer through no fault of their own as companies like Dow Chemical look to hide the facts and bury the truth in search of more profit as their Victims continue to suffer.
And let’s not forget Napalm, another Dow product and one of the most quoted passages of a U.S.Army source:
‘We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn’t so hot – if the gooks were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene – now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorous ) so’s to make it burn better. And just one drop is enough, it’ll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning.’
“The Vietnam war memorial in Washington is 492 feet long. If a similar war memorial had been made for the Vietnamese who died, with the same density of names, it would be nine miles long.”
Dow should be ashamed of itself! Justice for the Victims of Agent Orange!
http://www.lenaldis.co.uk/
Mark Shapiro
London UK
Curiously 58 years ago today April 7 1954 US President Dwight D Eisenhower gave his (so called) ‘famous’ domino theory speech. Little did he know what a positive, progressive, democratic country Vietnam would become.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisenhower-gives-famous-domino-theory-speech
Click on the link for the complete article by John Pilger
History Is The Enemy As “Brilliant” Psy-Ops Become The News
http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-Is-The-Enemy-As-B-by-John-Pilger-120620-235.html
Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, recently returned from Vietnam with a letter for the International Olympic Committee from the Vietnam Women’s Union. The union’s president, Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, described “the severe congenital deformities [caused by Agent Orange] from generation to generation.” She asked the IOC to reconsider its decision to accept sponsorship of the London Olympics from the Dow Chemical Corporation, which was one of the companies that manufactured the poison and has refused to compensate its victims.
Aldis hand-delivered the letter to the office of Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee. He has had no reply. When Amnesty International pointed out that in 2001 Dow Chemical acquired “the company responsible for the Bhopal gas leak [in India in 1984] which killed 7,000 to 10,000 people immediately and 15,000 in the following twenty years,” David Cameron described Dow as a “reputable company.” Cheers, then, as the TV cameras pan across the -7 million decorative wrap that sheathes the Olympic stadium: the product of a 10-year “deal” between the IOC and such a reputable destroyer.
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And let’s not forget Napalm, another Dow product and one of the most quoted passages of a U.S.Army source:
‘We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn’t so hot – if the gooks were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene – now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorous ) so’s to make it burn better. And just one drop is enough, it’ll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning.’
“The Vietnam war memorial in Washington is 492 feet long. If a similar war memorial had been made for the Vietnamese who died, with the same density of names, it would be nine miles long.”
Dow should be ashamed of itself!
Justice for the Victims of Agent Orange!