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Folks, The following email was sent to Jeremy Scahill re: my experience as a caller on today's Think Out Loud:

Jeremy,

I am an independent media producer in Eugene, OR. I heard your interview on OPB's "Think out Loud" today. I called in to ask a question re: the use of Blackwater-type mercenary's in the US, i.e. New Orleans post-Katrina, and what impact that means in re: to Bush's executive order gutting of posse comitatus in 2006.

At 20 minutes to the hour, I was told by an OPB intern screener that they didn't have time for my question. When I told her that there were still 20 minutes left in the show, she demurred and I was disconnected. Then I turned up my radio only to hear the host announcing for more callers. I called right back, got the same screener and then was told that my question was 'off-topic'. I asked her why she had lied to me and then she demurred again, saying, "She was sorry I was upset." I got her name, her supervisor's and producer's name and hung up.

With only a few minutes left on the show you made reference to my exact concern.

I thought you might want to know that I had been censored by OPB "Think Out Loud" producers for bringing up that extremely relevant and salient point earlier in the show when you could have addressed it in-depth on the air rather than just make a brief reference to it during the last moments of the show.

Amy Pincus Merwin, InForm Media
2220 Sandy Dr.
Eugene, OR 97401
541-521-5062

posted 5 years ago
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Thirty years ago lots of Western Oregon was subjected to massive clearcutting and massive aerial spraying of the poisons, phenoxy herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, both of which left behind, after their devastating immediate health and environmental effects, their manufacturing byproduct TCDD dioxin. TCDD Dioxin remains as a deadly, cancer-causing, mutagenous toxin in the environment FOREVER, attaches to sediment and over time migrated into the watersheds?springs, creeks, river and on. Salmon has always and still spawns in coastal mountain creeks on gravel beds and then migrates down into coastal rivers and eventually the Pacific Ocean, only to return to their EXACT spawning beds to lay and fertilize their eggs.

NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's Ph.D. scientist, Scott Hetch, has stated that NOAA does not consider TCDD dioxin a 'pesticide', but instead a 'POP' (persistent organic pollutant in the environment), so therefore NOAA does not test for TCDD dioxin as a part of their exploration into how poison pesticides effect fish.

As a side note, 2,4-D is still presently being used regularly on private timber clearcuts and timber operations throughout Oregon, and TCDD dioxin is still a manufacturing byproduct and major health and environmental problem.

I wonder what effect, if any, TDCC dioxin has on the current, devastatingly low number of returning salmon which is causing the current shutdown of West Coast fisheries.

I also, wonder why NOAA or some other Federal or Oregon State agency is NOT exploring and testing for the presence and possible impact of TCDD dioxin on salmon and other fisheries.

In Waldport where the Alsea River drains is the drainage basin in the middle of the 'Pacific Ocean dead zone', and there are extremely many very, unusual cases of illness that are plaguing this community. So, I also wonder if the Pacific Ocean 'dead zone' located off the central Oregon coast between Reedsport and Lincoln City might have, in addition to the already researched and confirmed ocean up-welling and global warming effects, some relationship to the migration of TCDD dioxin into those watersheds, which, in fact, were the ones mostly heavily sprayed with 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T thirty years ago?

My expressed concerns address issue areas that have not yet been explored by experts or officials in the discovery of what is causing the low return of salmon, but these do need immediate serious inquiry and research by those very people and query by serious journalists.


Amy Pincus Merwin
informproductions.com

posted 5 years, 3 months ago
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