World Politics

[Cobblestones]

The other day, one of the Eurozone countries tried to sell 6Bn Euros worth of debt, you know, for stimulus spending or whatever.

Surely when there's trillions of debt sloshing around out there, they should have been able to offload a few measly billion?

But no, they couldn't. No buyers. Too risky apparently. And the country in question is...

Germany.


The party's over. The shutters have come down over the bar, the doormen are looking ****ed off and you haven't got enough for a cab home. Mind how you go, be careful not to slip on the vomit on your way out.

Now, now. This has been explained in that Germany is one of the very few countries left with an 'AAA' rating, hence the yield on those bonds is practically zero. Apparently people (speculators) prefer higher-yield bonds such as French etc. over German ones. You might believe that or not but that is what is reported.

 

[Captain_Cavman]

Now, now. This has been explained in that Germany is one of the very few countries left with an 'AAA' rating, hence the yield on those bonds is practically zero. Apparently people (speculators) prefer higher-yield bonds such as French etc. over German ones. You might believe that or not but that is what is reported.

I would believe it if spreads on higher risk Govt bonds had narrowed. Instead Italy, Spain and a new player, Belgium, all shot straight into the 'it's just a matter of time' palliative care ward.

 

[Cobblestones]

I would believe it if spreads on higher risk Govt bonds had narrowed. Instead Italy, Spain and a new player, Belgium, all shot straight into the 'it's just a matter of time' palliative care ward.

Maybe there's something we don't know such as rumors on an agreement to eurobonds or a decision to print money...

 

[Captain_Cavman]

Maybe there's something we don't know such as rumors on an agreement to eurobonds or a decision to print money...

Who knows indeed. Frau Merkel seems to be more able to bend other countries to her will than her own.

 

[Amsterhammer]

A truly eye-opening article, too long to post in its entirety. Recommended.

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the **** kicked out of them

.

more....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Yes it's happening slowly, but some of the OWS people are starting to understand they need a message, and are forming one. They are getting indirect "assistance" in the fact that politicians and police are pushing them, which causes them to accelerate their mobilization. What they need is a leader, or leaders. A few faces people look to, to help deliver this coherent message. No, they're not going to find a Martin Luther King, and this isn't going to look like a march from Selma to Montgomery, but as long as these people have nowhere to turn, and as long as the establishment pushes back using the police, the OWS protests will continue.

As I said before, I fully expect to see massive protesting at next year's Republican Convention in Tampa. Protests that could turn from marches to riots. We could see it at the Dem convention too, but the GOP goes first.

 

[rhubroma]

Europe's troubles are both financial and ideological. How can the union members economies grow, however, when the means of production are ruthlessly being moved "off shore"?

For example, in Italy the Fiat corporation is closing its manufacturing factory at Termini Imerse, to relocate in China...

Now the faces and voices we see are of both desolation and impotence, almost as if losing your job is as ineluctable these days as a natural catastrophe (like the recent landslide in Liguria that devestated an entire villiage). Though there has been more outrage among those who were victims of the landslide, than among those fired at Termini. And this is indicitive of our times and a sign of just how profoundly neoliberalism has defeated the political and cultural world view of the left, which wanted to place production at the service of men and not vice versa. Human beings, exactly as Marx almost 200 years ago wrote, are a variable of capital.

Everybody, or nearly everyone, is aware, in the union leadership, just as among the workers, that the alternative experiment (real socialism of the Soviet order, the economy controlled by the state), was even worse, not only because it was less efficient, but more oppressive and inhuman. Yet the problem remains: gigantic, incombent and irresolved. Men as cogs, as pieces to use when they're needed, to discard when they are no longer useful, like in Chaplin's "Modern Times." Two centuries of struggle obtained more humane work hours, less miserable salaries, more factory workers' rights, but they weren't able to come up with or impose a mode of production for which human beings are the boss and not capital.

 

[craig1985]

Meanwhile in New Zealand, John Key's centre right National Party has been re-elected for another term (3 years).

 

[rhubroma]

I thought I'd throw this into the general politcs thread, because it touches upon an issue that's being discussed here about Europe's financial woes and its democracy. It was in response to what Alpe said about democracy in the US election thread. Apart from the last line, which I have omitted, it really belongs here:

But it is what the course of capitalism, the direction it has taken, has caused for our beguiled democracy.

As far as Europe is concerned, and I prefer the term kleptocracy out of those you so aptly listed, there is little glasnost in the way in which the EU countries operate in terms of how the financial apparatus that seems to control everyone’s lives is rationalized and administered.

I mean the governments work with the banking commissions in ways that have directly determined the economic situation and outlook, but none of their decisions have any democratic bearing whatsoever. As in America, the strong powers have gained a political consensus, for which the public policies are set by their interests alone and in accordance with what is exclusively befitting to them, without taking any recourse to public opinion. And if one isn't an expert in finance or the economy, as most obviously aren't (including yours truly) then how is one capable of formulating an informed opinion, or to understand what's in the collective interests versus those of the kleptocracy?

At any rate, speaking of glasnost, it's pretty incredible how easily democracy can become suspended when the imperatives of the financial Lords of the Universe take over the state; as for instance in what's recently happened to Italy with the way Monti's technocrat government is operating (or the fact that it even came into existence in such a matter of fact way, without suffrage, following Berlusconi's resignation). Those who are perplexed, with reason, wonder just what "impressive measures" to get Italy back on good market terms the dynamic duo Merkel and Sarkozy were referring to, since nobody in Italy knows, the new prime minister not having disclosed them yet. It's amazing that something so vital to the public interests hasn't been exposed to public opinion, but only in the meeting room of the EU parliament. While after years of Berlusconism, such silence here in Italy might very well be seen as a form of convalescence, it does speak volumes of how today's democracy appears much more as an abstraction than it does a concrete reality.

 

[Captain_Cavman]

Europe's troubles are both financial and ideological. How can the union members economies grow, however, when the means of production are ruthlessly being moved "off shore"?

For example, in Italy the Fiat corporation is closing its manufacturing factory at Termini Imerse, to relocate in China...

Now the faces and voices we see are of both desolation and impotence, almost as if losing your job is as ineluctable these days as a natural catastrophe (like the recent landslide in Liguria that devestated an entire villiage). Though there has been more outrage among those who were victims of the landslide, than among those fired at Termini. And this is indicitive of our times and a sign of just how profoundly neoliberalism has defeated the political and cultural world view of the left, which wanted to place production at the service of men and not vice versa. Human beings, exactly as Marx almost 200 years ago wrote, are a variable of capital.

Everybody, or nearly everyone, is aware, in the union leadership, just as among the workers, that the alternative experiment (real socialism of the Soviet order, the economy controlled by the state), was even worse, not only because it was less efficient, but more oppressive and inhuman. Yet the problem remains: gigantic, incombent and irresolved. Men as cogs, as pieces to use when they're needed, to discard when they are no longer useful, like in Chaplin's "Modern Times." Two centuries of struggle obtained more humane work hours, less miserable salaries, more factory workers' rights, but they weren't able to come up with or impose a mode of production for which human beings are the boss and not capital.

You can blame who you will. I think there is a massive crime being committed here by Western government against their citizens but it has nothing to to with what you call neoliberalism.


We are essentially exporting jobs and intellectual property rights to China. In return we receive goods cheaper than we could make ourselves. How do they do it?

The answer is: virtual slave labour, massive uncontrolled pollution and zero health and safety legislation. We have, in effect, imposed a massive burden on our own industry to improve the living standards of our workers, their working conditions and to improve our environment. All extremely laudable.

What isn't so laudable is that we've just passed on all those conditions that we find unacceptable in a modern day civilised nation onto someone else because there is no incentive for the 'uncivilised' country to improve them and every reason not to. Likewise, if a company cannot compete on price with a rival that has its manufacturing in the Far East, it will go out of business, losing local jobs for all of its employees. At some point people will suddenly wake up and wonder, "Holy ****, how did we let that happen." But no time soon, it looks like.

The idea that we have benefitted our economies, or the planet or mankind's living and working conditions is a lie and it is a lie that goes by the name of globalisation.

 

[Tank Engine]

NATO troops attacked a Pak istan border post. No details as to why this happened yet, but 24 were killed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15904197

 

[ramjambunath]

NATO troops attacked a Pak istan border post. No details as to why this happened yet, but 24 were killed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15904197

They attacked Pakistani troops, it seems. How on earth did that happen? Massive blunder by NATO and will definitely have make NATO's presence even less popular.

 

[redtreviso]

of course TOW missiles for Iran for our national security???

""Prosecutor: Reagan, Bush not criminally liable

BY PETE YOST
Associated Press

First published 2 hours ago
Updated 2 hours ago

WASHINGTON • One of the prosecutors who investigated the Iran-Contra affair concluded two decades ago that neither Ronald Reagan nor George H.W. Bush was criminally liable in the scandal that tarnished the presidencies of both men, according to reports made public Friday.

Associate independent counsel Christian Mixter reached that conclusion in 1991 even though he found that President Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment sold to Iran in the arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86. In a separate report on Bush, Mixter wrote that the then-vice president was chairman of a committee that recommended mining the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983.

Mixter’s reports were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group, which released them on the 25th anniversary of the Iran-Contra scandal. At a Nov. 25, 1986, White House news conference, Reagan and then-Attorney General Edwin Meese disclosed that money from the arms sales to Iran had been diverted to the Contra guerrillas fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua after Congress had cut off military aid to the rebels.

Mixter concluded it would be difficult to prosecute Reagan for violating the Arms Export Control Act mandating congressional notification of arms transfers through a third country — Israel in the case of the Reagan White House’s secret arms sales to Iran in 1985. The reason, said Mixter, was that Meese had told Reagan the National Security Act could be invoked to supersede the export control act.""

 

[rhubroma]

You can blame who you will. I think there is a massive crime being committed here by Western government against their citizens but it has nothing to to with what you call neoliberalism.


We are essentially exporting jobs and intellectual property rights to China. In return we receive goods cheaper than we could make ourselves. How do they do it?

The answer is: virtual slave labour, massive uncontrolled pollution and zero health and safety legislation. We have, in effect, imposed a massive burden on our own industry to improve the living standards of our workers, their working conditions and to improve our environment. All extremely laudable.

What isn't so laudable is that we've just passed on all those conditions that we find unacceptable in a modern day civilised nation onto someone else because there is no incentive for the 'uncivilised' country to improve them and every reason not to. Likewise, if a company cannot compete on price with a rival that has its manufacturing in the Far East, it will go out of business, losing local jobs for all of its employees. At some point people will suddenly wake up and wonder, "Holy ****, how did we let that happen." But no time soon, it looks like.

The idea that we have benefitted our economies, or the planet or mankind's living and working conditions is a lie and it is a lie that goes by the name of globalisation.

Well it seems to me neoliberalism that the right invented has always favored the bosses, more than the hired hands; and that under the forces of finanical capitalism, which it has so triumphantly championed, this type of moving the factories to lands where labor is both cheaper and more maliable just comes with the territory. And that this is what I meant about how defeated, historically, the political and cultural world view of the left has actually become: on today's planet where it seems as if capital has become a kind of omnipotent Giove, who rules over the affairs of men by the fury of his thunder and lightning bolts.

I totally agree with the lie that we call globalisation, though what else was to be expected? When the nations of men are governed by a logic that fosters intensive competition between them, rather than cooperation? Once upon a time there was a left that at least in its spirit of collectivity and what's for the public good, the culture and political world views I was referring to before, tried to promote. But then came along the neoliberal ideology that triumphed at the voter booths and the markets in the 80's, the Berlin Wall fell, globilisation; and now we are finding ourselves with a whole new set of problems that are potentially far worse in that our economy is a rebus for which neoliberalism has no solution, just as real socialism failed when placed under the forces of tyranny.

 

[Captain_Cavman]

Well it seems to me neoliberalism that the right invented has always favored the bosses, more than the hired hands; and that under the forces of finanical capitalism, which it has so triumphantly championed, this type of moving the factories to lands where labor is both cheaper and more maliable just comes with the territory. And that this is what I meant about how defeated, historically, the political and cultural world view of the left has actually become: on today's planet where it seems as if capital has become a kind of omnipotent Giove, who rules over the affairs of men by the fury of his thunder and lightning bolts.

I totally agree with the lie that we call globalisation, though what else was to be expected? When the nations of men are governed by a logic that fosters intensive competition between them, rather than cooperation? Once upon a time there was a left that at least in its spirit of collectivity and what's for the public good, the culture and political world views I was referring to before, tried to promote. But then came along the neoliberal ideology that triumphed at the poll booths and the markets in the 80's, the Berlin Wall fell, globilisation; and now we are finding ourselves with a whole new set of problems that are potentially far worse in that our economy is a rebus for which neoliberalism has no solution, just as real socialism failed when placed under the forces of tyranny.

We'll have to agree to differ. For me the issue is about imposing a burden on your own industry that you don't place on anyone else's. It is Blairism in all its glory, the third way, capitalism with a social concience...

We'll make our industry all clean and lovely. If people want to make more money, they can have horrible, nasty industry somewhere we can't see and don't care about. And with that extra money we can provide university places for as many people as are losing their jobs, so it will all work out for everyone in the end.

 

[rhubroma]

We'll have to agree to differ. For me the issue is about imposing a burden on your own industry that you don't place on anyone else's. It is Blairism in all its glory, the third way, capitalism with a social concience...

We'll make our industry all clean and lovely. If people want to make more money, they can have horrible, nasty industry somewhere we can't see and don't care about. And with that extra money we can provide university places for as many people as are losing their jobs, so it will all work out for everyone in the end.

I really don't see the nature of our disagreement, though this is probably owing to me being a blockhead. In any case, Blairism was not capitalism with a social conscience, but a disguised and, therefore, insidious neoliberalism. John Gray has even gone so far to call Blair a neocon, because his foreign and economic policies were essentially those of the Bush administration, only the packaging was more "decent."

And this is, once again, a demonstration of how just much the left has historically been defeated.

At any rate, what is happening in the Far East is that they are going through the same type of industrialization and economic growth that we in the West experienced, with all of its nefarious social injustices, during the XIX century. And we have put up no protest, other than the one about China purposely keeping its currency low to rig the consumer market in favor of its exports, especially because it plays to the hands of some of our corporate magnates. They are playing the same game we invented almost two centuries ago and this explains, also, why there has been a reassesment and revived regard for the writings of Marx. If anything the repressive regime that rules over China means that the Chinese will find it much harder to reform the labor structure into something more humane and socially acceptable as the West did, but which today has become an intollerable condition that the same West in many ways finds convenient and has made an expedient of for its manufacturing businesses.

Which is naturally appalling.

 

[rhubroma]

L'industria di Bhopal è sponsor
L'India minaccia il boicottaggio
La Dow Chemical ha acquistato anni fa la società responsabile della tragedia del 1984 in cui morirono 25 mila persone. Il paese asiatico, legato da sempre alla Gran Bretagna, minaccia di disertare i Giochi olimpici del prossimo anno a Londra, ma Sebastian Coe, presidente del comitato organizzatore, non vuole fare marcia indietro

India threatens to boycott the London games because Dow Chemical, the company that bought Union Carbide that caused the Bhopal catastrophe which killed 25,000 back in 84, is a sponsor.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I just watched a BBC doc on the Bhopal disaster. Very well made and definitely worth watching: Here's a link.

The numbers are hard to pin down as to how many were killed at the time, or over the years, but it was absolutely a horrific disaster, and right in line with discussions on why companies moved from the "over-regulated" US, to places like India where rules were much lighter. This is what many Republicans seem to want. Eliminate regulations so companies like Union Carbide (Dow) can run factories like they did at Bhopal. Then induce tort reform so the injured cannot sue the companies for any compensation. All in the name of "jobs" (or is it "growth"?)

It should be known that Union Carbide insisted, and I believe Dow still supports, that someone at the plant sabotaged the MIC tank causing the disaster. Of course that meant killing or maiming their friends, family, potentially themselves, etc. Similar to KerrMcGee claiming that Karen Silkwood poisoned herself with plutonium. But that's what they insisted, and that the plant was completely safe.

 

[aphronesis]

You can blame who you will. I think there is a massive crime being committed here by Western government against their citizens but it has nothing to to with what you call neoliberalism.


We are essentially exporting jobs and intellectual property rights to China. In return we receive goods cheaper than we could make ourselves. How do they do it?

The answer is: virtual slave labour, massive uncontrolled pollution and zero health and safety legislation. We have, in effect, imposed a massive burden on our own industry to improve the living standards of our workers, their working conditions and to improve our environment. All extremely laudable.

What isn't so laudable is that we've just passed on all those conditions that we find unacceptable in a modern day civilised nation onto someone else because there is no incentive for the 'uncivilised' country to improve them and every reason not to. Likewise, if a company cannot compete on price with a rival that has its manufacturing in the Far East, it will go out of business, losing local jobs for all of its employees. At some point people will suddenly wake up and wonder, "Holy ****, how did we let that happen." But no time soon, it looks like.

The idea that we have benefitted our economies, or the planet or mankind's living and working conditions is a lie and it is a lie that goes by the name of globalisation.

that lie goes by the name of neoliberalism insofar as it is passively and tacitly approved in the countries and classes that most benefit from the practices you describe above. it isn't a matter of deferred or belated recognition, what you dismiss as neoliberalism is precisely the set of affective, psychological, compartmentalizing and moral rationalizations which allow those manifold forms of exploitation to occur. in all likelihood, once they expire there will be other more diffuse mechanisms that take their place.

 

[redtreviso]

""He had survived being implicated in a coup against a President of the United States.

· He had thrived even after the defeat of his major client, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

· He had avoided being tried for treason, though the Justice Department had considered it.

· Both the President and Vice-President of the United States were personally indebted to
him.

· His lawyer Allen Dulles was head of the CIA (and gave his boy George H.W. Bush a job.)

· His business partner John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State.

· His business partner Averell Harriman was Governor of New York, later Ambassador to
the Soviet Union.""

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/26/prescott-bush-and-the-golden-age-of-war-profiteering/

 

[ramjambunath]

Strong reactions from Pakistan.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/27/us-told-to-vacate-shamsi-base-nato-supplies-stopped.html

Furious over the pre-dawn Nato attacks on border posts, the government on Saturday reacted sharply by indefinitely closing down supply routes used by western forces in Afghanistan and once again asking the United States to vacate an airbase previously used for drone operations. The government also said it would carry out a thorough review of its cooperation with the US and Nato.

The retaliatory decisions were taken at an emergency meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC), the country’s highest forum for defence policy consultation and coordination. The meeting was convened to discuss the Nato air strikes and make strategies for a response.

“The DCC decided to close, with immediate effect, the Nato/Isaf logistics supply lines. It also decided to ask the US to vacate the Shamsi airbase within 15 days. The DCC decided that the government will revisit and undertake a complete review of all programmes, activities and cooperative arrangements with US/Nato/Isaf, including diplomatic, political, military and intelligence,” said a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office after the meeting.

The decisions, though sounding tough, apparently kept the window for negotiations open.

Much needed reaction from the political class, a NATO blunder is being too kind to the NATO.

 

[redtreviso]

Ann Coulter stated: "So at the moment anyway, I mean I don't know what's going to happen in New York today, but at the moment I'm not really worried of a movement like SDS which really swept a lot of the college campuses taking over. Of course if it does, just remember the lesson from my book: it just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201111260001?frontpage

btw Ann was 9 yrs old in 1970..

 

[rhubroma]

I just watched a BBC doc on the Bhopal disaster. Very well made and definitely worth watching: Here's a link.

The numbers are hard to pin down as to how many were killed at the time, or over the years, but it was absolutely a horrific disaster, and right in line with discussions on why companies moved from the "over-regulated" US, to places like India where rules were much lighter. This is what many Republicans seem to want. Eliminate regulations so companies like Union Carbide (Dow) can run factories like they did at Bhopal. Then induce tort reform so the injured cannot sue the companies for any compensation. All in the name of "jobs" (or is it "growth"?)

It should be known that Union Carbide insisted, and I believe Dow still supports, that someone at the plant sabotaged the MIC tank causing the disaster. Of course that meant killing or maiming their friends, family, potentially themselves, etc. Similar to KerrMcGee claiming that Karen Silkwood poisoned herself with plutonium. But that's what they insisted, and that the plant was completely safe.

Thanks for the link. Well the only thing that's sabotaged is their heads and it can be summed up in one word: profit.

It's the same type of subterfuge that works on the minds of the oil companies CEO's, whose businesses wantonly pump toxins into the rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants,and comiting genocide among ancient cultures as for example Chevron Texaco Corp. has done in Ecuador's Amazon region.

Since May 2003, 30,000 Ecuadorian people have filed a $1 billion suit, which asserts that between 1971 and 1992 the oil giant dumped into open holes and rivers over 4 million gallons of toxic wastewater contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and that the company left behind nearly 350 uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and animals. This as reported in a NY Times article of May 8, 2003 (Abby Ellin).

During the so called oil boom of the 70's, the official poverty rate in Ecuador grew from 50 to 70%. Unfortunately Ecuador isn't the only country brought under the global empire's umbrella that has suffered a similar fate: third world debt has grown to over $2.5 trillion, and the cost of servicing it - over $375 billion per year as of 2004 - is more than all third world countries spending on health and education, and twenty times what developing countries recieve in foreign aid.

Neoliberalism at its finest.

 

[ramjambunath]

I just watched a BBC doc on the Bhopal disaster. Very well made and definitely worth watching: Here's a link.

The numbers are hard to pin down as to how many were killed at the time, or over the years, but it was absolutely a horrific disaster, and right in line with discussions on why companies moved from the "over-regulated" US, to places like India where rules were much lighter. This is what many Republicans seem to want. Eliminate regulations so companies like Union Carbide (Dow) can run factories like they did at Bhopal. Then induce tort reform so the injured cannot sue the companies for any compensation. All in the name of "jobs" (or is it "growth"?)

It should be known that Union Carbide insisted, and I believe Dow still supports, that someone at the plant sabotaged the MIC tank causing the disaster. Of course that meant killing or maiming their friends, family, potentially themselves, etc. Similar to KerrMcGee claiming that Karen Silkwood poisoned herself with plutonium. But that's what they insisted, and that the plant was completely safe.

Can't believe I missed this post.

I've lived in Bhopal for a couple of years and I can say that the water is still a bit iffy. People with no history of thyroid go there and have got the illness. Hairfall is another problem, profuse hairfall at that (I've heard this from more than one doctor).

It's a travesty that UC was allowed to get away with a fine of around $500 million for conservative estimates of 3000 immediate deaths and 15000 resulting deaths. These numbers are grossly underestimated having heard stories from the low lying regions of the city.

Sad that this will be the outstanding part of Bhopal's legacy as it is one of the most beautiful cities in India and is surrounded by some of the best natural and historic (and pre historic) man made history.

Cost cutting and negligence at it's worst.

On a side note- it's also massively shameful to the IOA that DOW chemicals is a sponsor of the Olympics. I can't see the documentary because the net's too slow at the moment but not too much prior to the tragedy a maintenance worker was killed as a result of a localised leak in the plant.

 

[ramjambunath]

I just watched a BBC doc on the Bhopal disaster. Very well made and definitely worth watching: Here's a link.

The numbers are hard to pin down as to how many were killed at the time, or over the years, but it was absolutely a horrific disaster, and right in line with discussions on why companies moved from the "over-regulated" US, to places like India where rules were much lighter. This is what many Republicans seem to want. Eliminate regulations so companies like Union Carbide (Dow) can run factories like they did at Bhopal. Then induce tort reform so the injured cannot sue the companies for any compensation. All in the name of "jobs" (or is it "growth"?)

It should be known that Union Carbide insisted, and I believe Dow still supports, that someone at the plant sabotaged the MIC tank causing the disaster. Of course that meant killing or maiming their friends, family, potentially themselves, etc. Similar to KerrMcGee claiming that Karen Silkwood poisoned herself with plutonium. But that's what they insisted, and that the plant was completely safe.

Can't believe I missed this post.

I've lived in Bhopal for a couple of years and I can say that the water is still a bit iffy. People with no history of thyroid go there and have got the illness. Hairfall is another problem, profuse hairfall at that (I've heard this from more than one doctor).

It's a travesty that UC was allowed to get away with a fine of around $500 million for conservative estimates of 3000 immediate deaths and 15000 resulting deaths. These numbers are grossly underestimated having heard stories from the low lying regions of the city. I can't see the documentary because the net's too slow at the moment but not too much prior (a year or two) to the tragedy a maintenance worker was killed as a result of a localised leak in the plant.

Sad that this will be the outstanding part of Bhopal's legacy as it is one of the most beautiful cities in India and is surrounded by some of the best, flora fauna and historic (and pre historic) man made monuments.

Cost cutting and negligence at it's worst.

On a side note- it's also massively shameful to the IOA that DOW chemicals is a sponsor of the Olympics.