What a farce -Bhopal trial: Eight convicted over India gas disaster

[malaise]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8725140.stm
<snip>
A court in the Indian city of Bhopal has sentenced eight people to two years each in jail over a gas plant leak that killed thousands of people in 1984.

The convictions are the first since the disaster at the Union Carbide plant - the world's worst industrial accident.

The eight Indians, all former plant employees, were convicted of "death by negligence". One had already died - the others are expected to appeal.

Campaigners said the court verdict was "too little and too late".

'Betrayal'

Forty tonnes of a toxin called methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory and settled over slums in Bhopal on 3 December 1984.
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Farce is a tame word for this one - all the American bosses have disappeared. Of course the 'corporation' is no more. What's the name of the reincarnated Union Carbide corporation??
Is this the BP model?????

[Altoid_Cyclist]

1. And the US refuses to extradite Warren Anderson. Better Things for Better Living..Through Chemistry.

Yeah...try telling that to people killed worldwide by chemical plants in their backyards.

One of many interesting links to the so called reparations and clean up by Union Carbide / Dow.

http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2382/59/

Excerpt:

The Union Carbide factory has never been cleaned up. It is still poisoning Bhopal. Recent tests showed the chemicals still at the factory site have contaminated the ground water, which is used as drinking water by some of the poor neighborhoods around the factory. There is mercury lying on the ground inside the site, according to a former foreman who worked for Union Carbide.

Dow Chemicals, the company which took Union Carbide over in a merger, refuses to clean up the site. It claims it is no longer liable because it sold its shares in an Indian subsidiary.

It doesn't end there. "In the past 20 years, I didn't live through a single day without painkillers, without a tablet," says Rashida Bee, one of the survivors of the disaster. Today Ms Bee, and thousands like her, are still suffering the long-term effects of poisoning by the gas that leaked from the Union Carbide factory that night.

Many of the survivors, when you speak to them, have to break off from time to time because of the Bhopal cough. It's a long, agonizing rattle that makes you wonder whether they can draw air back into their lungs. Women have menstrual irregularities. Others have more severe handicaps. Ms Bee's nephew was blinded by the gas.

Rest of article: http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2382/59/

[malaise]

4. Thanks for the link

:hi:

[Altoid_Cyclist]

13. You're welcome.

Thank you for your OP.

The American way, throw the little fish under the bus and protect the people who actually make the decisions that get people killed.

I'm guessing that at some point BP will try to place the blame for the Gulf disaster (not a strong enough word for it) on one of the workers who was killed.

This is one of those days that just has so many reasons to be pissed off at what we do to each other and the planet.

Stay safe!!

:hi:

[bananas]

11. He lives in Long Island

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8503515
"Journalist Shakti Bhatt located former Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson's luxury home in New York, declared unknown by the American and Indian governments, in India Abroad, the newspaper owned by Rediff.com, back in September 2002."
"As a Bhopal court convicted eight people on Monday, June 7, for the worst-ever industrial disaster, we reproduce the global scoop: ..."

[Mnemosyne]

2. 26 years later. BP has no worries, do they?

:puke:

Is the oil showing on your beaches? What a freaking nightmare...:grr:

I was in St.Croix the end of April for a week and watched the pelicans for hours. :cry:


You doing okay down there, malaise? Have things settled down any? Stay safe! :hug:

[malaise]

5. Not yet but our experts are very worried

given the change in the currents

Things are still very tense but at least the gun fire has subsided. Now the inquiries begin re extra-judicial killings. :fistbump:

[Mnemosyne]

15. So glad to hear the gunfire subsided! Must have been quite

stressful, to say the least. :hug:

What a nightmare greed has created in our world! Our beautiful oceans... :cry:

[blindpig]

3. Capitalist own the courts too...

No recourse there..

[malaise]

6. I love that graphic

:hi:

[spinbaby]

7. Way back in 1986...

I had a chance to chat with a chemist who had been part of the investigation. She was not an employee of Union Carbide but had been part of an investigative team of some kind--I forget the details, it was a long time ago. What does stick in my mind was that she was convinced that the accident was no accident but an act of deliberate sabotage.

[malaise]

8. Wow!

Frightening - when money and greed are more important than life expect anything.

[mackdaddy]

12. Low level worker opend a valve on purpose in the middle of the night

Is what I remembered, too. Back in the late 80's for a college term paper one of the groups in our class did their subject on this, and talked to several people from Union Carbide about 6 years after the fact. They were all convinced and very convincing that it had been a disgruntled local worker who worked in that area of the plant who had opened a series of valves which emptied the tanks on purpose.

The chemical turns into a heavier than air cloud of gas which rolled down hill into the village where the poor workers families lived like a fog of death and killed thousands.

I personally hate big corporations in general. The bigger the scarier they are, and the more evil. Even Google started off with the concept of "do no evil". Now that they are massive sure enough -- they are doing evil. Anyhow, I am no defender of big corps, but I do not know how you could ever truly secure anything dangerous like this from a deranged person with a grudge, access and a little technical knowledge.

The other thing that was notable for me was that the plant and this chemical were making "Sevin" dust, a basic insecticide that my dad used all the time on our tomato plants.

I am sure that Union Carbide could have done more to secure their site, but my guess is that when we look back at the BP Gulf disaster in 20 years, the human death toll in the gulf will make India look like a "small incident" and it will be an ecological disaster akin to taking 10 or 15 states and turning them into a desert. And BP knew better and violated their own safety procedures to save a few thousand dollars, and totally ignoring the costs if it went bad.

[AnArmyVeteran]

9. What a joke. That's NOT justice. Was the CEO arrested? Of course not!

[Blue_Tires]

10. ttt

[alfredo]

14. I think Union Carbide was absorbed into Dow.

[malaise]

16. Thanks

Same poison, different day.
Looks like they forgot 'Dow shalt not kill'
:hi:

[alfredo]

17. Bad pun, go to your room!