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Today's
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December
9, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
The Voices of Sharon's Little Helpers
December
8, 2004
Ralph
Nader
Will the Real Michael Moore Ever Re-Emerge?
Ann
Harrison
The Ohio Recount: Reluctant Officials
and Few Rules
Paul
Craig Roberts
War Crime
Dave
Lindorff
They've Got a Secret: Inside the $40 Billion Black Budget for
Spying
Patrick
Cockburn / Andrew Buncombe
CIA Warning on Iraq: Fallujah Did Not Break the Back of the Insurgency
Col.
Dan Smith
Rules of Engagement in Iraq
Emily
Alves / Michael Johnson
Paradise Lost: Corruption and Clientelism in Costa Rica
Richard
Oxman
The Dylan Bob Wouldn't Mention: Up With Dylan Thomas
Ron
Jacobs
In Fallujah, Freedom Isn't Free
December
7, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Running Battles in Baghdad
Behrooz
Ghamari
Lost Muslim Voices of Dissent
Dave
Lindorff
American Fantasies: Psst! Hey Buddy,
Did You Hear How Well the War's Going?
Joshua
Frank
Dean at the DNC?
Richard
Oxman
Down with Dylan: the Insufferable Interview
Ray
McGovern
All Mosquitoes, No Swamp
John
Chuckman
The Invasion of Hallifax: The Imperial Wizard Visits Canada
James
Petras
Latin America: the Empire Changes Gears
Website
of the Day
ToxMap: Who's Poisoning You
December
6, 2004
Paul
Craig Roberts
Paranoia and Pre-emption: Is the
Bush Administration Certifiable?
December
4 / 6, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Politicize the CIA? You've Got to
be Kidding
Joe
Bageant
Dining with the Rhinos
Alan
Maass
Reporting from the Ground in Iraq: an Interview with Patrick
Cockburn
Brian
Cloughley
Democracy, Bush-style, in the Gulf
Laura
Carlsen
Latin America Shifts Left
Lenni
Brenner
Jefferson, Madison, Bush and Religion
Anna
Ioakimedes
Brazil's Haitian Mission: Doing God's Work or Washington's?
Uri
Avnery
Widow of Opportunity?
Fred
Gardner
Supreme Court Hears Medical Pot Case
Dave
Zirin
Steroids to Heaven
Jackie
Corr
Mining Camp Blues: the Red State Variation
Don
Fitz
Will Greens Abandon IRV?
Lucy
Herschel
"Art can be a Weapon of the Oppressed": an Interview
with Artist Anthony Papa
Richard
Oxman
No Angels in America: Bashing the Gay Play
Ron
Jacobs
Holiday Greeting Card
Poets'
Basement
Collins, Albert, LaMorticella
December
3, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Lie Then Escalate
Ben
Tripp
Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a
Time of Crisis
Joe
Allen
Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer
Gilberto Soto
Matthew
B. Riley
Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson
Meir
Shalev
In the End, It is the Violin that Wins
Bob
Wing
The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
When McCain Bit His Tongue
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The EU, the US, Israel and Iran
December
2, 2004
Tito
Tricot
No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture
Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free
Behzad
Yaghmaian
The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration
Dr.
Susan Block
Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes
Frank
/ Chowkwanyun
Liberalism and Its Bounds
Lee
Sustar
Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt
Patrick
Cockburn
Another Grim Record in Iraq
Mark
Engler
Seattle at Five
Michael
Donnelly
Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham
Nate
Collins
The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds
Saul
Landau
The Assassination of Danilo Anderson
December
1, 2004
Phillip
Cryan
Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias
in Wire Coverage of Colombia
Dave
Zirin
What's the Matter with "Leon"?:
Budweiser's Racist Commercial
Ghali
Hassan
Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation:
200 Children Die Every Day
Donna
J. Volatile
Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy"
Patrick
Cockburn
How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency
Nick
Meo
Chemical War Over Afghanistan
Mike
Ferner
The Battle of Toledo
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising
Kathy
Kelly
Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes
of the UN in Iraq
November
30, 2004
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Veil of Secrecy
Toni
Nelson Herrera
Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence
Patrick
Cockburn
The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq
Chuck
Munson
WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization
Movement
Adam
Williams
Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana
Gregory
Elich
A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for
North Korea
Website
of the Day
Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!
November
29, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of
the CIA?
Omar
Barghouti
"The Pianist" of Palestine:
Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint
Mike
Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to
Market a Siege
Uri
Avnery
The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me
Some Credit!"
Matt
Vidal
Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers
Patrick
Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign
Minister
Alan
Farago
Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters
Justin
Huggler
Bhopal 20 Years Later
Antony
Loewenstein
How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy
Gary
Leupp
Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real
Issue
Website
of the Day
Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone
November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
November
26, 2004
Peter
Feng
Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine?
Greg
Moses
It's the White Vote, Stupid
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry
of Immigration
Dave
Lindorff
Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the
Way
Gary
Corseri
When Black Friday Comes...
Paul
Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Conservatives?
Website
of the Day
Iraq Pipeline Watch
November
25, 2004
Willliam
Loren Katz
Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks
to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today"
Mitchel
Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving
Mike
Ferner
An Uncommon Mom
November
24, 2004
Gila
Svirsky
License to Kill: the Example of Violence
is Set by the State
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The
Other Mess in Congress
Christopher
Brauchli
The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay
Dave
Lindorff
Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony
Ron
Jacobs
The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem
Ken
Sengupta
Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah
Diana
Barahona
The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader
John
L. Hess
Safire the Shameless
Jason
Leopold
Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear
War
Map
of the Day
Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860
November
23, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
Bush and Uribe at the Beach
November
22, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage
in Detroit
Paul
Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada
Kathie
Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill
Ken
Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place
in Iraq"
Mike
Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer
Roger
Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile
Website
of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?
November
20 / 21, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice
Todd
May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear
Abbas
Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account
Kevin
Zeese
Mishandling Nader
Landau
/ Hassen
After Arafat
Tom
Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley
Fred
Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd
Justin
E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel
Carl
Estabrook
Where We Are Now
Gary
Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue
Dave
Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon
Jenna
Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower
and Lives
Mickey
Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William
Blum
Greg
Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America
Sharon
Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?
Ron
Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs
Ben
Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days
Richard
Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!
Gilad
Atzmon
Politics and Jazz
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.
Website
of the Day
Voice of the Forest
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
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December 9, 2004
The Company That Keeps On Killing
Bhopal:
the Making of a Disaster
By
LEE SUSTAR
The symbol of corporate globalization
in India is Bangalore, the booming center of the country's information
technology industry--the supposed pacesetter for a free-market
transformation that, Indians are told, will finally alleviate
the country's enormous poverty.
But there's another face of
globalization in India. It belongs to Shakira Ehsan, whose legs
are so undeveloped and weak that she has to drag herself forward
with her arms.
Then there's 40-year-old Kanchari
Lal, who is unable to work because of chronic pain and shortness
of breath. And Jyoti, the 36-year-old woman whose reproductive
organs are so damaged that she's despaired of marriage and the
relative economic security that brings for a poor woman in India.
These are survivors of the
industrial disaster in Bhopal on December 2-3, 1984. A release
of poison gas at a Union Carbide pesticide plant killed more
than 8,000 people immediately, sent another 15,000 to early graves
and left an estimated 100,000 more with chronic and debilitating
injuries. As many as 500,000 people have been affected.
Twenty years later, Union Carbide
is still killing and maiming. Toxic chemicals from the now-abandoned
plant continue to seep into the groundwater, which the shantytowns
surrounding the factory have no choice but to use. Babies ingest
the poison through their mothers' breast milk--all but guaranteeing
brain damage, stunted growth and premature deaths.
Survivors are still struggling
to make Union Carbide and its current owner, Dow Chemical, pay
compensation. But the Indian government long ago agreed to a
settlement that excluded the victims themselves, capping damages
at $470 million, shielding Union Carbide from further liability
and creating a politicized and corrupt bureaucracy to administer
a meager compensation.
Vigorous pursuit of a U.S.
transnational corporation wasn't considered good business at
a time when India was seeking more foreign direct investment.
That's why Bhopal isn't some nightmarish aberration from the
free-market "new India," but its inevitable accompaniment--the
price of India's insertion into the world economy.
* *
*
That shift began in the 1970s
through the transformation of world agriculture known as the
"Green Revolution." While ostensibly aimed at boosting
farm output in poor and developing countries, the Green Revolution
in fact reflected the increasing corporate-dominated, export-oriented
agriculture of the wealthiest countries--the U.S. and Western
European states.
Thanks to massive government
subsidies, prices for U.S. and European grains and other agricultural
products undercut those of farmers in the Third World, forcing
them to cut production and adding to the problem of hunger. The
World Bank then stepped in with loans to finance major technological
changes in agriculture, such as investments in mechanized farm
implements, genetically modified seeds and--gaining Union Carbide's
attention--pesticides.
The promised dramatic reduction
in Third World hunger never came. As left-wing economist Nigel
Harris noted in the early 1980s, the Green Revolution had the
effect of "redistributing agrarian inputs away from the
production of the foodstuffs consumed by the mass of the population--millets
and pulses in India, for example--towards wheat and other relatively
high-priced products, many of them eminently suitable for export.
This is part of the explanation for the coincidence of increased
output and increased hunger.
Business Week magazine summed up the situation in
India in 1994: "Even though the granaries of India are overflowing
now, 5,000 children die each day of malnutrition. One-third of
India's 900 million people are poverty-stricken." With the
poor unable to afford these products, "the government is
left trying to store millions of tons of food. Some of it is
rotting, and there is concern that rotten grain will find its
way to public markets."
Union Carbide's Bhopal plant,
built in the 1970s, was a speculative investment in the Green
Revolution--and the state-dominated Indian economy's new openness
to foreign investment.
Terms of the deal required
Union Carbide to establish an Indian-based subsidiary, a fact
that the company would later use to deny responsibility for the
disaster. In fact, company negotiators were determined that the
U.S. firm would retain a controlling interest in the Bhopal plant.
"Our specific objective is not to accept any conditions
which would reduce our equity below 51 percent," stated
a 1973 Union Carbide corporate finance plan. The company eventually
settled on a 53.5 percent stake.
The Bhopal factory was designed
as a state-of-the-art plant, a twin of another facility in Institute,
W. Va. But from the beginning, the plants were operated on two
standards, as a recent report by Amnesty International conclusively
shows.
The West Virginia operation
had computerized monitors of valves and storage tanks; the Bhopal
facility had only manual gauges. Operators in West Virginia had
to undergo months of safety training; in Bhopal, such training
was minimal. A loud siren at the U.S. plant was designed to warn
workers and the community of any leaks of toxic chemicals; the
Bhopal operation's warning system was dismantled and replaced
because frequent spills had triggered alarms so often.
The biggest differences between
the two plants was supposed to be the way in which they stored
the key ingredient used in the pesticide Sevin--methyl isocyanate
(MIC), derived from the phosgene gas used as a chemical weapon
in the First World War. Given the inherent dangers of storing
MIC, designers of the Bhopal plant had intended to use individual
small containers for greater safety. Yet when the Bhopal plant
came on line, it used the same huge storage tanks as its West
Virginia counterpart.
In the U.S., however, round-the-clock
production meant that there was no long-term storage of MIC before
it was processed. Bhopal, however, lacked sufficient processing
capacity, so MIC was stored for weeks--or months--in massive
tanks holding 90 tons of gas, guaranteeing that that the large
spill of December 1984 would be catastrophic.
* *
*
FOR THE past 20 years, Union
Carbide and its current owner, Dow Chemical, have fought to keep
claims of Bhopal survivors from reaching U.S. courts.
The reason: "Such abject
poverty and the vastly different values, standards and expectations
which accompany it are commonplace in India and the Third World,"
the company's lawyers argued in U.S. District Court. "They
are incomprehensible to Americans living in the United States."
In fact, it was Union Carbide's
"values, standards and expectations" that led company
managers to systematically cut costs at the Bhopal plant, making
a calamity inevitable. According to the Amnesty International
investigation, since the plant had never showed a profit, the
corporate chain of command pressured plant managers to save money
any way they could--including cutting staff and reducing maintenance.
A team of Union Carbide safety
inspectors from the U.S. noted 10 major hazards in 1982, including
the potential for an MIC leak. In the summer of 1984, the head
of the plant workers' union wrote to management about the problem
of pollution, as did a lawyer representing area residents. Meanwhile,
a Bhopal-based journalist wrote an article on the dangers of
the plant for a leading newspaper. The headline: "Bhopal:
On the brink of a disaster."
Two decades after the disaster,
countless articles have recounted its horrors. Yet they've also
highlighted the inspiring campaign of Bhopal survivors to push
the case into U.S. court--to force Union Carbide/Dow to pay compensation
to victims and pay for the cleanup of the plant site.
There's also an effort underway
to bring Warren Anderson, then the CEO of Union Carbide, to trial
in India for homicide. Activists held protests at Dow board members'
houses and offices on the 20th anniversary of the disaster.
In April, two Bhopal survivors,
Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, were awarded the prestigious
Goldman prize for environmental activism for their work in fighting
for compensation and economic opportunities for survivors. In
an interview with Socialist
Worker published earlier this year, Bee and Devi Shukla
described how their struggle has established links with the movement
against corporate globalization.
"We don't think they will
be able to put us off forever," Devi Shukla said. "You
know, more and more people are becoming aware of what is going
on. We are trying to wake people up. And once you have a population
that is awake and willing to fight, nothing can stop you."
Lee Sustar is a regular contributor to CounterPunch
and the Socialist Worker.
He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net
Weekend Edition
Features for November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
|