32Likes
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacksWell, I for one think this is good news.
One can never have too few "sustainability" managers.
Well, I for one think this is good news.
One can never have too few "sustainability" managers.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Third Assessment Report: “long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Actually if I have the right Committee this one has come under fire because it is charged with arranging the legacy of the Games in terms of infrastructure for London.
This is the usual mess of course with two football clubs and a police investigation into industrial espionage surrounding who will occupy the stadium afterwards, claims of white elephant development around the Olympic Village (Wimpytown) and 30million spent by various Committes on legacy work without any clear agreement as to what happens from September this year onwards.
The usual Olympic farce that happens in pretty much every city this travellers caravan of corporate moneysucking out of public funds touches.
Difficult to argue with any of that, in fairness.Originally Posted by Sync
Bu, indi bütün uşaq mavi var!
[QUOTE=LamportsEdge;4870111]You are assuming that Dow Chemicals and Union Carbide as was act with good faith ordinarily. I would dispute that. They'll act with whatever the ledger tells them like any other corporation.
[quote]
The only question in terms of good faith with the purchase is "Did Dow know that the Indian govt would be A: So massively incompetent as to not bother cleaning up the mess and B: Did they know the Indian govt would refuse to hand over part fo the settlement. " And even then, it's not really Dow's problem. What bad faith do you think was shown by Dow over the purchase of the company? They're responsible for it's liabilities. The liabilities in terms of this issue were settled with the govt prior to purchase. Barring a revision of that settlement, how is it Dow's issue upon purchase?
Anderson? Is he even alive at this stage? He's got to be in his 90s. With all the typical competence that the Indians showed, they asked him over for discussions, swore they wouldn't arrest him, then arrested him on arrival. Then they let him go on bail and he did one. It's hard to blame him on that count. I don't know what your issue is with corporate lawyers, but he'd have been using a criminal one I'd have thought. He used the logic that this was an act of individual sabotage and thus the company couldn't be held criminally liable. I've yet to see a counter argument to that logic. If he willfully ignored messages that this was likely to happen or with indifference towards results was involved in actions that saw the event occur, then you've got him for neg homicide. But otherwise? What crime do people think he's committed?Did the Chief Executive of Union Carbide ever surface in the end or is he still using the corporate lawyer to avoid extradition to India- having fled to the States?
Oh sure. The entire organisation and process is riven with corruption.However I'm glad to see that you get my point about corporations and their branding of the Olympic Games- sweatshop corporations, sugardealers and marketers to kids, chemical weapons makers and all the known bribery of officials that surfaces every time the Olympics does.
If you're the first out the door, that's not called panicking.
Strange- I thought I left a post asking what you thought of the Olympics being sponsored by a chemical weapons maker- specifically with reference to Agent Orange.
It is easy to play the corporate lawyer game- the evasion of the central question about how low you want to go in ethical standards in life. Almost anything can be ajudged 'okay' if you want to pretend that life is simply an episode of LA Law with added exquisite justifications for doing nothing by people who are paid to divert such central questions into legal precedent.
On that basis and fully aware of Godwin's Law the Nazi party was elected in Germany with less controversy than George Bush's first electoral appointment. It was justified by lawyers and still stinks up the US presidency as an institution to this day.
All laws can properly be ignored if you can evade detection by law enforcement authorities. Corporations such as Dow exist in that half-light of bought silence among humans. But is that right and proper? I realise these concepts will seem naive to those who make a living in that half-light and justification is necessary for such an existence.
Do you know of a single environmental law case wherein the regulator has been ruled more culpable than the offender? Should the regulating U.S. authorities, for instance, have been found more responsible than BP for what happened in the Gulf of Mexico?
Perhaps surprising given India's ranking on international corruption indexes but this is not true. The $470 million (and interest built up over 15 years) was entirely distributed by 2004 to the over 580,000 people maimed and killed by Union Carbide. Those made ill for the rest of their lives got an average of £630 each spread across two payouts. Local touts, lawyers and judges jockeyed for a slice of this meagre pie from individual claimants but there's no evidence that the Central Government took a bean. There's plenty of hearsay that officials of the Central Government who fixed the settlement deal did well enough to open some bank accounts in Switzerland, but these would have been separate payments to the civil settlement. The settlement's cost to Union Carbide? A $0.50 cents per share hit on pre-tax dividends for the 1989 fiscal year.Indian govt pocket a good portion of the money owed to victims
Scandalous, isn't it. Though several Indian accused were prosecuted in 2010, the three foreign accused charged with "culpable homicide" are still on the run and have been declared fugitives from justice. The three - Warren Anderson, Union Carbide and Union Carbide Eastern (Hong Kong) - just refuse to appear in court. The majority of the time Carbide has been on-the-lam it's done so as a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical.Indian govt fail to prosecute those responsible for 20 years
The period of non-prosecution also coincides with an onrush of foreign direct investment after Manmohan Singh's 'New Economic Policy' of 1991, most particularly from the US who have since become India's principal trade partner. Before Bhopal the US wouldn't even sell arms to India due to its proximity to the Soviet Union. In 1986 - around the time India decided not to appeal a US court's decision to throw the Bhopal case to India's courts - Rajiv Gandhi and Reagan struck a deal for a consignment of fighter jets and military technology and the rapprochement gathered pace from there. Throughout much of the nineties, while the criminal case against Carbide floundered due to Carbide's refusal to attend court, the Indian government expressed the utmost apathy towards pressing for extradition of its authorised officials. Perhaps not a coincidence that President Bill Clinton's right-hand man, Vernon Jordan, just happened to be a director of Union Carbide. It hardly got better under Dubya. One of his choices for vice-president - John Danforth - was a director of Dow, which had now merged with Carbide. The head of the "George Bush for President campaign", Barbara Franklin, which raised around $30 million, was also a Dow director, and Dow's CEO Stavropolous was an advocate of war on Iraq and a board member of the American Enterprise Institute.
At least things must be different under Obama, right? Wrong. Obama has appointed Dow CEO Andrew Liveris co-chair of his 'Advanced manufacturing Partnership'. In 2010 Indian officials began making strong noise about going after Dow in the ongoing civil, environmental and criminal cases. Within weeks, leaked emails showed US officials threatening to pull investment from India if they pursued Dow.
Completely untrue. There were criminal and environmental cases ongoing at the time of the merger, which were brought fully to Dow's attention in a lawsuit brought by a Dow shareholder that attempted to stop the merger on the grounds that Dow would inherit these liabilities. Those still thinking that Dow merged with Carbide believing everything was settled should have a look at a Times of India article, which ran a week ago. I can't post the link but it's called "Dow re-labelled, sold UCC products to evade law". It suggests that Dow follows a calculated policy of liability evasion in respect of Bhopal involving fraud and deception.Dow buy the company on the understanding that this has all been resolved.
Also completely false. No litigation on the contamination has yet been decided, either in the US or India.Dow and Indian govt go to court to decide who's actually responsible for the removal of waste.
Dow win.
Indian govt fail to live up to their contractual and court defined obligations by removing the waste.
As a matter of expediency, an Indian court affirmed that "the question as to who is responsible for the clean up cannot overshadow the question of clean up itself." This is the only reason Indian authorities have been engaged in moving above-the-ground waste - a fraction of the overall problem - and it does not detract from Dow’s and UCC’s fundamental Polluter Pays' responsibilities, which have been affirmed by Indian authorities numerous times. The 'Polluter pays' principle has been upheld numerous times in India's courts. At the very least Union Carbide was a joint-tortfeasor in creating the contamination nuisance in the first place, and the polluter must pay. As the article mentioned above shows, Dow employs the fiction of the corporate veil to distance itself from Union Carbide and evade 'successor liability'.
$50 billion Dow took on Carbide's ongoing Bhopal liabilities with full knowledge. Instead of doing the right thing, it uses elaborate deception and technical arguments to mask its functional unity with Carbide and thereby evade the courts. Though $100 million or less would stop it, Dow allows people in Bhopal to be poisoned every day. I'd call that morally reprehensible, personally.But this is somehow Dow's moral duty to fix. It's not. It's India's.
Here ya go: Dow re-labelled, sold UCC products to evade law - Times Of IndiaThose still thinking that Dow merged with Carbide believing everything was settled should have a look at a Times of India article, which ran a week ago. I can't post the link but it's called "Dow re-labelled, sold UCC products to evade law". It suggests that Dow follows a calculated policy of liability evasion in respect of Bhopal involving fraud and deception.
Happy to help, and thanks for your very informative post.Dow has never claimed ownership over UCC's liabilities in India, and insisted
that the latter is a separate legal entity. The Bhopal activists have demanded
that the corporate veil between the two be breached by courts and the government
to prosecute the chemical giant, which has also got embroiled in the controversy
over sponsoring the London Olympics, 2012.
A mail from Dow Chemical Pacific Manager in April 2001 reads, "There was a
big lawsuit with UCC in India in the past. UCC considered the case is closed but
India's official and companies didn't think so. Presuming the product ships
directly from USA to India, my suggestion is to selling the product under Dow
legal entity with Dow label and document will be a good way to proceed."
This would seem to back up Meredith Alexander's POV?
Bu, indi bütün uşaq mavi var!
Much thanks for your help.
For those who are interested in learning more, there's another more detailed story on this topic in The Independent today called "Olympic sponsorship row fuelled by Bhopal revelations".
Olympic sponsorship row fuelled by Bhopal revelations - Olympics - Sport - The Independent
Not only does this seem to contradict Sync's view expressed earlier, it puts the focus firmly on Locoq and Seb Coe.The disclosures appear to undermine Dow’s assurances to Lord Coe, chairman of
the London 2012 Organising Committee (Locog), that the chemical giant and UCC
are distinct entities which operate independently, which would mean Dow has no
legal obligation to compensate Bhopal’s gas victims or deal with the ongoing
environmental disaster.
His response will be interesting, if any is forthcoming.
(Edit: I mean Seb Coe's response, not Sync's. Although his thoughts would be interesting too!)
Last edited by Astral Peaks; 13th February 2012 at 02:29 PM.
Bu, indi bütün uşaq mavi var!
So Dow were maintaining that they bought Union Carbide but not the bit with liabilities? Interesting. Maybe I should put in a cheap bid for Anglo-Irish Bank but with a line in the proposal excluding the bit with the debts.
The voters in any democracy are never wrong. Where the voters are declared mad it is because their political class has driven them mad. They are, however, still always right.
Reply With Quote