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39 Comments
- Haoie, on 11/02/2009, -1/+32And sadly, mention the name to the average person, they wouldn't have a clue. Maybe 1/1000 would know.
- BlackOculus, on 11/02/2009, -3/+24The atrocities of mankind never cease of disturb me.
- zeppo, on 11/02/2009, -8/+25Capitalism at it's finest.
- drgmdp, on 11/02/2009, -2/+17more like the chernobyl of chemical industry
(bhopal was not an attack) - Vorsprung, on 11/02/2009, -2/+13Speaking as an Indian, Union Carbide can go suck a c*ck.
- prettyawesome, on 11/02/2009, -0/+10What an awful accident...
- boogerthecat, on 11/02/2009, -0/+9I remember- it was somewhere near the top of the list of the worst industrial accidents in history.
Chernobyl may actually have been worse. The Soviets were never very forthcoming with bad press. - Dustin00, on 11/02/2009, -3/+10But we should trust corporations to run U.S. health care!
- Jerryskid02, on 11/02/2009, -0/+6Reminds me of Agent Orange from Vietnam. Thousands of American soldiers were/have/are affected by it. As the government has just recently acknowledged that it had any after affects at all. Yeah us.
- theboyqueen, on 11/02/2009, -0/+5Anything that suppresses the immune system can cause latent tuberculosis (which is probably ubiquitous in this region) to become an active disease. I am not sure whether this is an issue in this case but it is not out of the question.
The confounding problem is that the pulmonary diseases caused by these toxins are often likely misdiagnosed and mistreated as tuberculosis.
Anyway ***** Union Carbide and ***** Dow. - scyphozoa, on 11/02/2009, -0/+5its ***** that the survivors got literally pennies for compensation.
- useLessToday, on 11/02/2009, -0/+4People ...GET THIS RIGHT...the Indian government had rules that forced the plant to be "managed" by local FOOLS.....now a socially responsible corporation would have told the government that they can shove there rules, that you all can't manage jack and we're not training local inepts...but they were as stupid as the rules AND greedy...just like the workers at the plant...at a normally operated factory the people in charge are competent ...corporations ARE scummy but so are government rules and unions and individuals and mother nature....not deregulation but stupid regs put in place by STUPID bureaucrats...
- inactive, on 11/02/2009, -0/+4Absolutely awful. You can't even forget about it, because the horror is still going on.
- ryanisjimdandy, on 11/02/2009, -4/+7Deregulation. Totally worth it, right?
- NeddieSeagoon, on 11/02/2009, -0/+3I would never have heard of the Bhopal disaster if it weren't for the Yes Men.
- KingBroseph, on 11/02/2009, -1/+4Heard about the this from the "Yes Men Save the World". Very interesting documentary with a lot of stuff I didn't know about.
- UTKEngineer, on 11/02/2009, -0/+3How does this have anything to do with deregulation? If anything, this is proof that micromanaging regulation doesn't work.
- fragomatik, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2FTA: "The company (Union Carbide) was taken over by Dow Chemicals in 2001..."
And guess what? Dow Chemicals produced the defoliants used during the Vietnam War. The US dumped 19 million gallons of these herbicides onto Vietnamese soil over a nine-year period. The key ingredient of Agent Orange is 245T which can easily become contaminated during the production process with dioxin, one of the most toxic substances known to Man. - allstrox, on 11/03/2009, -0/+2Not true. The Indian government had a 22% stake in UCIL. The parent company, Union Carbide was the largest shareholder and had actual control. They probably owned 49% of the company. Private shareholders from India owned the rest. Laws in India at the time required this shareholder breakup for foreign companies setting up subsidiaries.
- prettyawesome, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1That's fake - read the description of the YouTube Video you're linking...
- allstrox, on 11/03/2009, -0/+1It's not that bad. But still pretty low compensation.
"In 1989, Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million to victims—$1,500 per death and $550 per contaminated individual."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_23 ...
Of course, these were the people who were immediately affected. The remaining thousands who suffered over the long term from chemical contamination of the area got zilch. - Scottamus, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1Hey, corporations are people too! (This one should be put to death)
- EddyRX10, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1OGC
- sandaboy, on 11/02/2009, -2/+3Excuse my OCD:
"The atrocities of mankind never cease to disturb me." - JohnnySoftware, on 11/06/2009, -0/+1Union Carbide built the plant but Indians operated it.
It's not a much different situation than if Microsoft opens an R&D center in India and they produce good or bad code - are Americans going to get all the credit for blame for that or the people writing the code?
India has a lot of contaminated drinking water. There are pesticides in the well water and that is what the licensed US brand Indian bottled soft drinks use. US name brand soft drinks bottled in India were rejected by inspectors when imported to Europe because they were too toxic.
It seems like in both cases, Indians not Americans were in control of what let toxic chemicals into their environment. It is tragic and the system needs to be fixed but India regulates India and Indians control the valves and levers that let the chemicals spill into the environment in its country.
It is not like the plant was designed to release that deadly gas into the environment. Maybe some chemical plants in the world are designed dump say chemical waste into the river or they just do that surreptitiously having made the decisioon to do so.
There was no business decsion to release the gas from that chemical plant in India that I am aware of. It was always described as a local accident, not an insidious plot made by people in some other country.
American companies who build plants in India are always pressured to hire Indians. Maybe they should be pressured to hire the best people they can find who will operate the critical parts of plant safely if it is hazardous. In the US, there are regulations for: worker safety, plant safety, and environmental protection. India has really huge government. It seems like if the government has the power to insist who works in the plant then it has the power to regulate it.
In the industries where the US got lax on regulation during the past decade, look what happened. We paid the price too, it was just different industries. And half a century ago, the US had been lax on chemical companies within its borders, and that caused problems, and regulations were added.
India can do that too. - UTKEngineer, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1How can you use quotes and not give a link for the quoted material?
Also, since you brought up UCIL. Why don't you discuss WHY it was formed and who the principle share holders were? - UTKEngineer, on 11/02/2009, -2/+3What the hell are you talking about? UC was regulated out the Wazoo. As a matter of fact, UC wasn't even in charge of the Bhopal site. UCIL (that's Union Carbide INDIA limited) was in control. A company which the Indian government had a controlling interest in.
- UTKEngineer, on 11/02/2009, -1/+2Please explain how this was a result of capitalism?
This is a much better example of the effects a government power grab over private industry. - ryanisjimdandy, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/6
Doing research for you isn't my job.
If you want to formulate an argument based on UCIL, go ahead. It's what UCC did. They also blamed the Sikhs and terrorists. - Zarcane, on 11/02/2009, -2/+2B. Dolan has a great song about this..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeG-stYr648 - ZurMacht, on 11/03/2009, -1/+1It amazes me that people say this is somehow the fault of capitalism.
If the Indian government (and many governments) weren't so corrupt and took bribes from companies in order to enforce monopolies through the use of state power things like this would be much less common. Crazy, but when companies are responsible for environmental disasters usually people don't want to purchase from them anymore. If they had alternatives they could purchase from they would, but often they don't, because true capitalistic competition (and even cooperation) often isn't allowed because of the status quo. Who, by the way, are only able to enforce such monopolies because they have military power (through taxation).
Calling this capitalism is like calling Stalin's Russia communism. - Neville007, on 11/02/2009, -0/+0One of the most ***** up things I heard about the incident is that UC immediately sent squads of lawyers to make the victims sign for ridicule compensations. Capitalism at its finest, indeed.
- Twenty, on 11/02/2009, -1/+1Depends on how criminally negligent it was
- ANorwell, on 11/02/2009, -1/+0Nothing escapes you.
- inactive, on 11/02/2009, -5/+4The champions of deregulation wring their hands with glee at the thought of bringing the potential for this sort of disaster into stateside industrial operations.
- ryanisjimdandy, on 11/02/2009, -1/+0"The local government was aware of safety problems but was reticent to place heavy industrial safety and pollution control burdens on the struggling industry because it feared the economic effects of the loss of such a large employer."
"Immediately after the disaster, UCC began attempts to dissociate itself from responsibility for the gas leak. Its principal tactic was to shift culpability to UCIL, stating the plant was wholly built and operated by the Indian subsidiary." - inactive, on 11/02/2009, -4/+2...When their not jacking off to pictures of the Triangle Shirtwaste fire aftermath.
- ANorwell, on 11/02/2009, -4/+1At least Dow apologized for the incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI
- tsotha, on 11/02/2009, -8/+0Tuberculosis? Oh come on, it was bad enough without this kind of exaggeration.
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