BP: Remember Union Carbide?

[8236]

I do. It's been 25 years since around 10,000 were killed at Bhopal in India by a US multinational's lack of safety standards.

I would love to see the standards of justice applied to the Bhopal survivors be applied to the inconvenienced Gulf coast inhabitants we see whimpering daily about the inconvenience to their holiday experiences or the temporary loss of business incomes.

Don't get me wrong, I hate these overpaid oil executives. They should be strung up by their balls, but at the same time, the rest of us westerners should STFU until this wrong has been righted. -> US nails BP for oil spill, ignores Bhopal - World - ibnlive

 

[Old Rocks]

Ah, but to most of the people on this board, those in second and third world countries are not really human beings. Witness what is happening in the Niger Delta, with hardly a word of protest from anyone.

In the corperate world, profit eclipses the value of human lives, and the environment we live in, every time.

 

[Barb]

Ok, yes, our corporations (they aren't ours anymore though, they all belong to the world now, accountable to no one) did get off with an awful lot of pissing in everyone else's sinks. I always thought that was shitty, and knew that sooner or later it would come right back home. It has. Still, why are Gulf Coast "inhabitants" whiners instead of people with a legitimate bitch?

 

[Baruch Menachem]

OMG, I remember that story. 3800 people died.

UNION Carbide statement on the tragedy.

they maintain it was deliberate sabotage.

 

[dilloduck]

Ah, but to most of the people on this board, those in second and third world countries are not really human beings. Witness what is happening in the Niger Delta, with hardly a word of protest from anyone.

In the corperate world, profit eclipses the value of human lives, and the environment we live in, every time.

These same corporations that are killing people are also providing goods and services that the world couldn't survive without. They save lives.
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is a poor and shortsighted plan.

 

[Barb]

Ah, but to most of the people on this board, those in second and third world countries are not really human beings. Witness what is happening in the Niger Delta, with hardly a word of protest from anyone.

In the corperate world, profit eclipses the value of human lives, and the environment we live in, every time.

These same corporations that are killing people are also providing goods and services that the world couldn't survive without. They save lives.
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is a poor and shortsighted plan.

Wouldn't you agree that they need to be regulated, and that they should have clear limits on what damage they are allowed to externalize? The damage they do is also a cost of production, and as they reap the benefits of their activity, they also should pay the cost.

 

[Trajan]

actually verdicts, yes better late than never I guess, have been rendered.


june 7th 2010
I'd post the link but I don't have 15 posts yet.. its form the wall st journal go there and search union carbide...
and

Court Convicts Seven in Bhopal Gas Leak

NEW DELHI—A district court in Bhopal found seven former Union Carbide India Ltd. officials guilty of "causing death by negligence" in the gas leak there 25 years ago, the first verdict in the only Indian criminal case against the company related to the disaster.

The defendants were found guilty of failing to prevent the leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant, sentenced to two years in prison and fined 100,000 rupees ($2,130), India's Central Bureau of Investigation said.

The former Union Carbide India Ltd. was convicted of the same charge and fined 500,000 rupees. The verdicts will likely be appealed.

Victims groups expressed anger about the sentences. "Two years is nothing," said Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, an activist group on behalf of survivors and victims. "How can this be a deterrent?"

The Bhopal district court sentenced the defendants to the maximum possible under the charges brought against them.

The officials were charged under a provision often used in connection with hit-and-run traffic accidents, said a Bhopal activist.


rest at-

oops no 15 posts yet...
wsj articulate...dated, June 9th 2010