Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal (India) gas disaster.
Half a million people fell ill.
It killed 4,000 people within 24 hours.
An additional 15,000 people have since died from its aftereffects.
10 to 30 people continue to die from it every month.
The perpetrator has still not cleaned up the site.
The perpetrator ceased to exist in 2001.
Quiz: Who is the perpetrator?
Hint: In 2001, Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide for $11.6 billion.
Wow. You’re a bit short on attention this week. Did Sean not send you a holiday card?
I appreciate you keeping this on the ‘event horizon’. It deserves to be remembered, for all the wrong reasons.
I plan to go refresh my memory of what happened there at wikipedia later tonight.
I need to get out and ride my uni while its still light. Multi-day storm coming in.
Happy Negligent Corporation responsible For Industrial Disaster cards were a bit short on the ground when I was at the supermarket, sorry.
Compare the casualty figures to those of 9/11, and compare the political consequences, and consider the countries involved.
Now imagine if the same incident had happened in America and how it would now be remembered.
toxins still leaching into the ground
Today in a Brooklyn public park, Dow Chemical Company sponsored the Dow Live Earth Run for Water, along with a concert. They don’t want to clean up Bhopal which they poisoned, and they continue a court battle to escape paying compensation to families of those they killed.
But now that green is in, they want to try to become associated with being pro-environment. 
The Union Carbide plant in Bhopal unleashed 40 tonnes of lethal gas, killing more than 3,500 in one of the world’s worst environmental disasters.
Amnesty International said this week the tragedy and resulting illnesses like cancer had claimed 22,000 to 25,000 lives. Victims’ rights activists put the figure as high as 30,000.
Dow says all liabilities were settled when Union Carbide paid a $470-million settlement - but protesters claim only part of that has reached victims. Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide in 2001, insisted that all liabilities regarding the leak of methyl isocyanate gas have been settled with the Indian government.
The company says it has no responsibility for cleaning up the site or for any toxins still leaching into the ground, but the Indian government is awaiting the decision in a US court that could ask Dow Chemicals to clean the site up further.
I agree with Billy the Mountain. 
Somehow, I doubt the court case(s) will turn out well. American corporations, run by rich white men, have never really cared much about the dying masses of brown people. I have little faith that the rich white men in the courts will start to change that.
So cynical so young. Your generation should be changing the world, like mine didn’t either. 
Which, the rich white men sitting behind the bench, or the rich white men on trial? 
Everyone agrees with Billy in a random walk sort of way. Don’t let it get to you.
Harper is one of those White me, who owns stock in Dow Chemical.
Word.
Do you know the Reverand Billy Talen?
Yes 
Many of my friends have seen him, everyone likes him, he’s always doing something in town. Why?
It’s not just the rich white men, its the rich brown men too. For them to have a plant in India would have required a lot of government intervention and middle businessmen. These guys get richer and richer, don’t pay their taxes (most open offshore accounts in the Mauritius) and think that the the laws don’t apply to them…until some other businessman or politician outs them, gets public support and does the same thing. The cycle continues.
Also, I think at that point in time the country was more focussed on the assassination of the PM than the lives of a few thousand poor people. I don’t think we make a big enough deal of it in India.