This is the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster, an epic mess that started one night when a pesticide plant owned by the American chemical giant Union Carbide leaked a cloud of poisonous gas. Before the sun rose, almost 4,000 human beings capable of love and anguish sank to their knees and did not get up. Half a million more fell ill, many with severely damaged lungs and eyes.
An additional 15,000 people have since died from the aftereffects, and 10 to 30 people are said to die every month from exposure to the hundreds of tons of toxic waste left over in the former factory. But amazingly, the site still has not been cleaned up, because Dow Chemical, which since acquired Union Carbide, refuses to accept any responsibility. The groundwater is contaminated; children of the survivors suffer from genetic abnormalities; and the victims have long since run out of their measly compensation and are begging on the streets.
[...]
the total settlement for Bhopal was $470 million. The families of the dead got an average of $2,200; the wounded got $550; a Dow spokeswoman explained, that amount “is plenty good for an Indian.” As Representative Frank Pallone of New Jersey observed in 2006, “In Bhopal, some of the world’s poorest people are being mistreated by one of the world’s richest corporations.”
A new report by Global Witness and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has revealed the extent of illegal logging in the National Parks and protected areas of the SAVA Region of Madagascar. The two non-profit organizations state that 30-115 cubic meters of precious rosewood, worth between $88,000 and $460,000, are being illegally harvested every day. Members of the Forest Administration, the national police and other Malagasy authorities are accused of serious failings, and in some cases, complicity with the traffickers.
“Some of the world’s unique forests, and the communities that rely on them, are being degraded beyond repair to feed our demand for luxury goods,” said Andrea Johnson, Director of Forest Campaigns at EIA. Between 100-200 rare trees are estimated to be cut down each day.
“No judgment, of course, will bring back the 9th Ward, which years after Katrina and Rita is still largely a ghost town, but this acknowledgment that the destruction didn’t have to happen is important.”
A landmark court ruling blaming the Army Corps of Engineers’ “monumental negligence” for some of the worst flooding from Hurricane Katrina could lead to a new deluge: billions of dollars in legal action from thousands of storm victims.
[...]
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the corps’ shoddy oversight of the channel southeast of New Orleans caused much of the flooding of St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward, two of the hardest-hit areas after Katrina.
The decision opens the door to billions of dollars in other claims by more than 100,000 individuals, businesses and even government entities that have pending damage claims against the corps. Duval awarded $720,000 in property damages to four individuals and one business.
“You guys get this done for me, and I’ll make sure I can take care of AIG and Merrill,” Paulson replied. “I’m a little uncomfortable talking about Merrill with John right in the room.” He glanced uneasily at Thain, whose face, everyone suddenly became aware, had taken on a deathly pallor. “John,” said Paulson hesitantly. “Have you been bitten?”
It was then that Thain let out a gutteral animal howl. Half-rising from his chair, he lunged toward Pandit. “BRAINS!” he moaned.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, who was sitting in between the men. He rolled his chair out of the way.
Geithner ran out of the room, screaming like a little girl.
When people protested Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the large majority of them did not ask for capitalism. They wanted the freedom to live their lives outside state control, to come together and talk as they pleased; they wanted a life of simplicity and sincerity, liberated from the primitive ideological indoctrination and the prevailing cynical hypocrisy…people aspired to something that can most appropriately be designated as “Socialism with a human face.” Perhaps this attitude deserves a second chance.
This article is not the only one I’ve read that reflects a kind of “Soviet nostalgia,” but it is definitely the most poetic…
When I was a child in the 1960s, there was a photo in my history book. “Man market in the 1930s” was its title. Younger and older men were standing on a marketplace in their poor clothes, waiting for a richer man who would hire them for a day’s labour. This photo reminded me of the pictures of the slave markets in the American South a century ago.
In the 60s life was restricted but secure in socialist Hungary. There was full employment in the country, everybody had a job and accommodation, and nobody was forced to sell his muscle at a market like this. There were many sad photos in our school history book, images of executions, death camps and destruction in war. But this photo from the prewar, capitalist system with its silent sadness frustrated me the most. I almost cried thinking about those poor men, standing for hours in the marketplace, competing with each other for a lousy dime, offering the capacity of their hard work for some fat exploiters.
The memory of this photo came back many years later. In the early 90s, 1.5m jobs were lost in a country with only 10m inhabitants and whole industrial sectors disappeared during the capitalist transition. Homeless people slept all over Budapest (before 1989 I had never seen them except in my trips to western Europe), former schoolmates and friends lost their jobs, the state-run workmen’s hostels and trade union rest-houses were either privatised or just demolished, old pensioners tried to sell their cheap dinner services on the street to earn some money. One day on the Moscow Square, near to my flat in Budapest, a huge man market was opened. Hundreds of poor men were standing there waiting for a day of labour – exactly like on that old photo. Capitalism hadn’t changed too much during the 40 years Hungary was absent from its empire.
While I don’t necessarily endorse the system and lifestyle that existed in pre-1989 Eastern Europe, I find it interesting that this type of reflection has been common, especially of late. Fascinating, too, how the author points out some of the tensions between “capitalism” and “democracy”:
On the political surface the transition to democracy was successful…We had a freely elected parliament from 1990 and our newspaper became the flagship of the left-liberal press attacking the new conservative government for its incompetence. While the debates were concentrated on ideological issues, the deepening gap between the few rich and the growing poor seemed to be a marginal question for the political elite. Parties had long debates on whether or not to put the holy crown into the arms of the republic, but the mainstream politicians didn’t touch the topic of lost jobs and their social consequences. By the mantra of the new system politics should not interfere with the mechanism of the market: the market wisely regulates itself, and any kind of state intervention is a bad reminder of the communist past.
To sum it all up:
After 20 years of transition most Hungarians are disillusioned with the new system – partly because of the worldwide economic crisis, but that alone doesn’t explain all the poverty, corruption and political hatred.
[...]
Very few Hungarians realise the dual nature of the 1989-90 transition. We should be proud of the democratic changes; but there is no reason to follow the capitalist dogmas of the 1980s which characterised our economic transition. The ideal answer would be democracy without capitalist dogmas; but this, of course, is not only a Hungarian challenge.
