Remembering Bhopal: Corporate
responsibility means never having to do much more than hire a PR
company and say: sorry, we won't do that again; we've changed, we
really have; we care.
Unfair?
Hajra Bi remembers waking up just after midnight on 3 December 1984. A
strange smell was making it difficult to breath. She ran outside with
her family:
'People were running blindly. Many
were falling down. By then my eyes had become so swollen that I could
hardly open them. I had my dupatta covering my eyes.
'I was carrying four year old Nazma
and my husband was carrying Shareef who was six and Iqbal who was two
years old. I had gone a little distance when Nazma started making
gurgling and choking sounds. I pried my eye lids open and saw there was
froth coming out of her mouth.'
Shareef died after three months. Yosouf, born six months after the
leak, died when he was a year old. Shahbano, born later, also died.
Hajra Bi received Rs 15,000, just under £200, in compensation
from Union Carbide, the corporation responsible for the world's worst
industrial accident. [Bhopal.org].
Yesterday, protestors dumped toxic waste at the headquarters of Dow
Chemical in Bombay to mark the 18th anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak.
Women from Bhopal delivered brooms to Dow with the message: 'Dow, clean up your mess'.
Some 20,000 people have died since the leak of 40 tonnes of deadly
gases at the pesticide factory in 1984.
At least one person a day still dies from diseases related to the leak. [Greenpeace].
Dow Chemical,
which merged with Union Carbide in 2001, denies responsibility for
cleaning up the site or for paying out any compensation.
In 1989, the Indian government settled out of court with Union Carbide
for $470m. It seems unwilling to press the Bhopal victims' case,
possibly for fear of putting off potential US investors.
What if a gas leak had occurred in New York or London?
Anne Karpf pointed out last year that the 25,000 families of those
bereaved by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre received on
average $25,000 each.
This contrasts with the average $1,300 compensation for each of the
14,824 Indians killed immediately in Bhopal. For the hundreds of
thousands of people disabled by the leak, the average payout has been
$580. [Guardian].
For more about the Bhopal campaign for justice, see Bhopal.net.
For more insight into the ways in which corporations like Dow play
merry with the truth, see the pranksters (quickly, before they attract
the attention of Dow's lawyers) at Dow Toxic:
'We don't want people to think "chemicals"
when they hear "Dow" -- we want them
to hear "Living. Improved Daily." We don't want them to think of a
corporation striving to maximize profits, we want them to think of a
good neighbor. . .
'. . . unless we're frequently and
visibly expressing a deep concern about Sustainable Development, we're
missing opportunities to position Dow as the caring, concerned global
citizen our customers must believe us to be. . .
'Setting corporate targets and
judging ourselves against them is an important part of our strategy to
ensure that we remain free of the fetters of over-regulation by
government.' [Dow-Chemicals].
Shellfish waste: Each Christmas, Norway sends a tree to London as a
sign of its gratitude for British help during the Second World War. But for
how much longer? Norwegian gratitude may about to be eclipsed by exasperation.
A Norwegian businessman chained himself to a bridge by Sellafield nuclear
plant yesterday. Petter Stordalen, chief executive of Choice Hotels Scandinavia,
Norway's largest hotel chain, said he had been forced to take action because
Tony Blair wasn't listening to fears about the nuclear plant. [Guardian].
Like the Irish,
the Norwegians are angry at what they regard as the UK government's careless
attitude towards Sellafield's nuclear waste emissions. Marine currents carry
technicium 99 from Sellafield to Norwegian waters where it contaminates seaweed
and shellfish.
Last Christmas, Norwegian environmental activists in Santa Clause outfits
climbed the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square as a protest against Sellafield.
[Bellona].
Protesters in
Trafalgar Square, London last
Christmas
In March, the Norwegian prime minister gave his blessings to protests against
Sellafield. A torchlight procession ended at the hotel where Michael Meacher,
UK environment minister, was attending a conference. [Guardian].
Oil stains: A new online book lifts the (petrol) lid on Shell. Jack Doyle, an investigative researcher who's worked for Friends of the Earth, argues in Riding the Dragon that while Shell may brand itself as socially responsible, its behaviour marks it out as one of the biggest environmental violators on the planet.
[Flash] Nuke 'em high: The UK's ageing nuclear
power stations need to be replaced. But by what?
Find out more about the nuclear debate by playing these online educational
games - brought to you by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) with the help
of the Science Museum:
'BNFL gave the Science Museum full control of what to say on this website,
agreeing to a legal contract that ensures this is the case now and in the
future. The work has not been influenced by BNFL or any other person or organisation.'
Bang out of order: Ireland has taken the UK to an international court
to find out how much radioactive material the Sellafield nuclear plant in
Cumbria is pumping into the Irish Sea.
The UK government isn't keen on giving out figures. That kind of information
is 'commercially sensitive', it argues.
But sales figures and details about future contracts are an important part
of understanding what's happening at Sellafield and so should be released,
says Ireland. [Independent].
Under EU law, if Ireland can prove that Sellafield's radioactive discharge
has no economic benefit, it may be able to shut the nuclear plant down.
It's easy to understand why the Irish might not be too keen on Sellafield.
From Ireland, it's only 110 miles to the nuclear plant on England's northwest
coast.
MI5 warned last December that Sellafield was a prime target for terrorists.
Its proximity to transatlantic flight paths means that there would be no opportunity
to intercept a hijacked plane before it hit the plant.[Guardian]
A successful terrorist attack would leave the north of England uninhabitable,
a House of Commons defence committee was told in January. [Guardian].
In July, the nuclear installations inspectorate told British Nuclear Fuels
that two sets of tanks at Sellafield were dangerous because they were too
old. [Guardian].
Irish Environment minister Martin Cullen told the arbitration court, acting
under the OSPAR convention: 'The worst-case scenario is unthinkable, that
we would cease to exist if something went cataclysmically wrong.' [Irish
Examiner].
Life in Pandemonium: On general release in October, Naqoyqatsi ('Civilised Violence'), the last in Godfrey Reggio's trilogy of non-narrative films about our world falling out of step with nature, describes the expansion of technology, the new digital spaces surrounding us. [QTime trailer]; [Koyaanisqatsi].
From our own correspondents: Alt(ish) media is charging up batteries for
the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The Daily
Summit, a weblog set up with help from the British Council, hopes to post
news and gossip as it happens from the streets and conference centres of Johannesburg.
Also worth bookmarking for the Summit's untold stories is South
Africa Indymedia. One way or another, pace Gil
Scott-Heron, the conference will be blogged.
Killing an idea: While worthies and woollies, cynics and charlatans
prepare for Johannesburg and the World
Summit on Sustainable Development at the end of the month, Jeremy Seabrook,
with all the despair of Cassandra on a bad day, says that we can't have it all,
that growth can't be reconciled with conservation.
The idea of sustainable development has become part of the 'treacherous
lexicon of developmentalism - empowerment, participation, poverty-abatement,
inclusiveness, and so on: ideas absorbed and redefined in terms amenable to
privilege.
'Sustainable now means what the market, not the earth, can bear; what originally
meant adjusting the industrial technosphere so that it should not destroy the
planet has now come to indicate the regenerative power of the economy, no matter
how it may degrade the "environment".' [Guardian].
Money grows on trees: Bush is wrong when he says that climate control measures will cripple the world economy, say two US climate scientists. If we carry on belching out pollution, we'll be 10 times richer by 2100. Of course, we won't be able to breath without oxygen masks. If we act now to stop global warming, we'll be ten times richer in 2102. Only a two year delay. And we can save the masks for Blue Velvet conventions. [New Scientist].
Slapping greasy palms: Billionaire fund manager George Soros argues that Big Oil must be made to declare payments to governments: 'They [oil majors] need to have their arms twisted for their own good.' [Guardian].
The new pollution: Easing controls on energy companies will give them the flexibility they need to improve their plants and will lead to a decrease in air pollution, says the US government. Yeah, right. [Salon].
[Flash with sound] Kyoto according to Bush:
Mark Fiore says let's accentuate the positive about global warming: 'So
you lose a couple of ice caps, but you gain a non-stop beach party. . .'
[Mark
Fiore].
The Bush legacy: The US Department of Energy hopes that a modern stonehenge
will warn humans in the distant future to keep away from the 70,000 tons of radioactive
waste expected to be dumped under the Yucca Mountains in Nevada. Salon's Douglas
Cruickshank calls the scheme harebrained - er - farsighted. [Salon];
[Archaeology
- pic and summary].
Market forces: According to George Monbiot and colleagues, online spin merchants the Bivings Group sent a scientific paper in Nature magazine reeling out of circulation.
Written by two Mexican scientists, the paper argued that maize could be contaminated by GM pollen over vast distances.
Posing as concerned scientists, Bivings Group spinners posted messages attacking the paper, says Monbiot. It worked. Last month Nature's editor bowed to criticism from readers and disassociated the magazine from the paper.
Bivings lobbies on behalf of, among others, Monsanto. [Guardian].
As Monbiot points out, the Bivings Group website contains an interesting feature: Viral marketing: How to infect the world:
'There are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved... it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it is important to first "listen" to what is being said online... Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party... Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously.' [Bivings Report].
Rat trap: While the BBC and ABC both treat it as one more trip forward in the gee-whiz rush of science, the Guardian's James Meek argues that the idea of controlling rats through implants in their brains, turning the rats into 'ratbots', is wrong, is something that scientists should campaign against:
'The prospect of roborats is a glorious opportunity for scientists who carry out serious medical experiments on animals to stand up and try to put some ethical distance between what they do and animal work related to the military, or to abstract scientific curiosity. It can work. Ian Wilmut, the pioneer of animal cloning, has been tireless in his public condemnation of human reproductive cloning, calculating correctly that the broader cloning field will gain more than it will lose from greater public awareness of different kinds of cloning. There is little sign of mainstream scientists taking a similarly robust line on different kinds of animal experiments.' [Guardian].
Back at the Tyrell Corporation, the scientists are adamant that the rats like turning into robots: '"They work for pleasure," says Sanjiv Talwar, the bioengineer at the State University of New York who led the research team. One electrode stimulates the rat's medial forebrain bundle, or MFB, the "feelgood" centre of the mammalian brain. "The rat feels nirvana," Talwar says.' [Nature].
The way of the wobble: Currently featuring new artwork inspired by its fabulous collection of jellyfish, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's jelly rooms exist way outside of this world. I took a day trip there last summer. Picture yourself in the dark with nothing around you except tangerine ghosts. My mind floated downstream. I felt relaxed, expanded, quite, quite Californian. Who needs dolphins, eh? Mark my words: jellies are in danger of becoming the next big chill-out accessory. [Wired News].
Bjørn again: The tussle between Bjørn Lomborg, the skeptical environmentalist,
and Scientific American continues. Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, argues
that claims made by environmentalists about global warming are exaggerated.
Scientific American says he's wrong. [Scientific
American].
[Flash with sound] - Oil's well: Thanks to the enviromental lobby, it's a little known fact that caribou are fascinated by heavy machinery. As always, the Bush administration does its best to tidy up the truth. [Mark Fiore].
Ooh, Lawdy: If the marketing of Play was anything to go by, your Aunty Ethel is as likely to be tapping her toes to Moby's new album, 18, out in the middle of May, as the Cool Kids, Adult Triple-A Types and Underground Tastemakers who usually go for this type of corporate electronica. Play's tracks were licenced, every one of them, to hundreds of adverts, films and TV shows at the turn of the millennium. You couldn't help getting sucked into its peering-over-the-edge, always-pulling-back melodies of hope in a time of paranoia even if you dipped your hobnobs way outside the MTV demographic. Coronation Street capers, the News at Ten, the footie: all punctuated by the vegan environmentalist's lucrative joint ventures with, among others, Galaxy, Thorntons, Rolling Rock, Renault, Nissan. No escape. Moby did the same across Europe, the US, the world. Not surprisingly, the album went top of the pops.
Moby doesn't get quizzed in the May issue of Wired about how his left-of-centre political beliefs mesh, don't mesh with his fondness for the corporate world. The article leaves you feeling that the pro-democracy pose was just a phase:
'"For a long time I felt superior to everyone else," he says. "Because I was a vegan, and 'cause I didn't drink, and 'cause I didn't sleep around, and 'cause I listened to dance music. It all made me feel arrogant and superior." Then one day, after a bitter breakup with a girlfriend, Moby found himself consumed with the need to get outside himself temporarily. Soon, he was getting drunk with friends and asking himself, "Why was I so judgmental for such a long time?" The uncomfortable conclusion lingered long after the cosmopolitans had worn off. "I was just being an uptight prick," he says, sounding like a member of Uptight Pricks Anonymous. "I didn't spend every waking minute being an uptight, judgmental prick - but I definitely had those tendencies."' [Wired].
Kinda funny. But it doesn't look too deeply at the internal contradictions of Moby. Which is a pity because Moby, much more than his music, is interesting. His weblog gives an inner insight.
Moby spent today in an airport in Texas thinking about what makes Dick Cheney tick. And, remember, Moby doesn't do drugs:
'it wouldn't surprise me if dick cheney was some sort of zombie who is kept alive with an i.v drip of crude oil. instead of sleeping they just put him in a closet every night and refuel him. and you know that the only reason that the administration is hell bent on getting rid of saddam hussein (who is, of course, a very bad and genocidal man) is because they want some of that sweet, iraqi oil.
'ugh, foreign policy as determined by oil-men. but then perhaps i'm in the wrong state to be saying things like that...i certainly don't want to be lynched in texas just cos i think that the bush administration is a cabal of corrupt oil men who were installed by an even more corrupt cabal of even eviler (is "eviler" a word? well, it is now, ok?) oil men.
'"oil men" has such an appropriate ring to it. i imagine these creatures who instead of having internal organs just have thick, black oil circulating through their systems.
'maybe there should be a new saturday morning cartoon show where the superheroes Captain Wind and Captain Fusion battle the evil villains Oily and Fission.' [Moby].
Barenaked politicians: Film-maker Jack Price spent two months following Tony Blair around for a Labour Party election broadcast and ended up feeling quite green. So he tore up his party card. Quite understandable. You never know where that Tony's been, where he's about to go next.
Shown just before the last general election, [RealPlayer] Leadership's candid fly-on-the-wall look at the Labour leader left many viewers feeling queasy too.
Price's film added to the personality cult around Tone, said the Tories. Still tugging at the memory of the blessed Margaret, they know a thing or two about personality cults.
Is it really 20 years since Thatcher had her finest moment? BBC 4, getting better all the time, ran Ian Curteis' The Falklands Play the other night with Patricia Hodge giving a good impression of the Leaderene in full and devastating control. [Guardian].
Looks like Tony is following in her goose-steps.
Ever controversial, Price's new party broadcast, for the Green Party, due to air this month, breaks new political ground (at least for the UK) by featuring nude models. Its catchline is: 'We've never looked so good'.
Given the alternatives, I'm starting to agree. [BBC].
'I love the countryside, but I do not love the hunt': A farmer (David
Welch, former deputy chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi) says that hunting is cruel,
cowardly and boorish: 'Usually the first indication that a hunt is in the area
is when a dozen or so cars barrel down the drive, park in front of the barns or
house and decant their occupants, and 30 or 40 mounted followers proceed to charge,
unannounced, over my property, cutting up fields from which stock has been moved
for the winter to ensure good grazing during the spring and summer. When I inform
mounted — or car — followers that they are not welcome, I am usually abused, sometimes
threatened and invariably told that I do not understand the ways of the countryside.'
[Spectator].
[Flash] Pre-industrial revolution: Angry green words and music from actor Woody Harrelson: 'I sometimes feel like an alien creature for which there's no earthly explanation.' [Voice Yourself].
