By Danielle Knight

Washington, DC, May 7 (IPS)— The 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, is haunting Dow Chemical Corp., which last year bought Union Carbide Corp., the company blamed for the deadly release of gas and, say survivors and their US supporters, the continued suffering from ill-health of more than 100,000 people.

More than 8,000 people died within 48 hours of the accident, at a Union Carbide pesticide plant. Doctors and survivors’ advocates say an additional 20,000 people have died from chemical exposure since 1984, and at least 120,000 people remain chronically ill.

On May 9, at the Dow Chemical annual shareholders meeting, representatives of Bhopal survivors, accompanied by over 50 supporters, demanded Dow CEO Michael D. Parker clean up the contamination, and compensate the victims for the ongoing medical and economic hardships caused by the gas disaster.

“It is my hope that the gravity of our situation can be understood by our willingness to travel around the world to state our case for 5 minutes,” said Dr. H. H. Trivedi, a Bhopal survivor who addressed Dow CEO Michael D. Parker during the Q&A phase of the meeting. Parker’s refusal to meet privately with the survivors the day before the shareholders meeting prompted Dr. Trivedi to comment, “How can your company tout its dedication to corporate responsibility while turning a cold shoulder to us?”

The 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killed 8,000 people within days and, according to doctors, an additional 20,000 in the years following. Survivors have filed a suit against Dow Chemical, which now owns Union Carbide, in US courts.

Photo courtesy of www.bhopal.org

As part of their US tour, the survivors donated to the Midland Center for the Arts a replica of the Bhopal monument originally dedicated to the victims of the disaster. At an unveiling ceremony, Midland and Bhopal were named sister cities, united in their chemical legacies and by Dow’s lack of commitment to clean up their toxic waste and prevent a Bhopal-type disaster from happening elsewhere. Also part of the Bhopal alliance is a growing number of US-based South Asians, who were present outside the meeting in a loud and colorful protest.

In response to concerns raised by Bhopal survivors and their supporters, Dow Chemical reversed their earlier decision not to meet with the delegation. Taking note of the protestors outside the Dow meeting, the chair of Dow’s board invited representatives to continue discussions with CEO Michael Parker. The representatives made it clear that further dialogue would not be productive without substantive proposals from Dow. The delegation and supporters await the much delayed concrete proposals from Dow.

Dow officials note that the Indian government and Union Carbide settled reparations litigation in 1989 and say there are no outstanding liabilities involving the Bhopal disaster.

Unhappy with the court settlement in India, health advocates and environmentalists had been trying to force Union Carbide to pay for the ongoing medical expenses of gas leak victims. When Dow acquired Union Carbide in February 2001, activists switched their focus to the Michigan-based chemical company.

“Dow must face trial and provide long-term health care, including medical care, health monitoring, and research for victims of the Bhopal disaster,” says Amit Srivastava, international programs coordinator at CorpWatch, a California-based advocacy group.

In an attempt to raise support for their campaign against Dow, Srivastava and two health care professionals from Bhopal are meeting this week with lawmakers here and other activists across the United States.

Activists accuse Dow of applying a racist double standard in the Bhopal case, saying the company has accepted liabilities involving other litigation against Union Carbide in the United States.

Earlier this year, Dow settled a lawsuit filed in Texas against Union Carbide, which had mined asbestos and operated an asbestos facility there.

“If Bhopal had happened in New Jersey, Dow would have already accepted responsibility for the Bhopal disaster,” says Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace’s toxics campaign.

Following the 1984 disaster, the Indian government filed civil litigation against Union Carbide, seeking three billion dollars in damages. The case was settled five years later, when Union Carbide agreed to pay the victims $470 million with the understanding that the company would be absolved of all civil and criminal liabilities with regards to the leak. Victims said they were not consulted on the settlement, which amounted to about $350 per person.

Survivors and their supporters have since said that not all the money has been properly disbursed.

In response to petitions filed by Bhopal victims, in 1991 the Indian Supreme Court reinstated all criminal cases against Union Carbide and its officials. Criminal proceedings began in a Bhopal court but Union Carbide officials, including then chief executive Warren Anderson, refused to appear in court, leaving the case in limbo.

Bhopal victims also are seeking justice in US courts. Seven victims and several activist groups had filed a class action suit in 1999 against Union Carbide. In August 2000, a US federal court in New York dismissed the case. But in November 2001, an appellate court reversed the ruling. Union Carbide has since filed a motion to dismiss the case.

Two health care workers from Bhopal, Satinath Sarangi and Harihar Trivedi, are touring the United States this week, telling lawmakers and health activists that people in Bhopal are still suffering long-term health effects from the disaster. They are scheduled to speak at Dow’s annual shareholders’ meeting Thursday.

“Every day we see three to four people coming to the clinic with chronic coughs and other health problems related to the disaster,” says Trivedi, a physician.

Many more people, not necessarily exposed to the original gas leak, have been exposed to carcinogens and other poisons that have leached into the drinking water from toxic waste abandoned at the site, says Sarangi, an administrator of the Sambhavna Clinic, which treats Bhopal victims.

“The toxic wastes that are still lying at the factory and related damages are not covered by the $470 million settlement,” he says.

Union Carbide, says Sarangi, also will not release information on the types and amounts of chemicals that had been released. This information would help physicians treat patients, he says. Union Carbide denies that it has withheld information.

One known component of the leak was methyl iso cyanate, which can cause neurological damage. As many as 30 different chemicals -- all posing different health risks -- may have been released, says Sarangi.

“Many of the synergistic health impacts of these chemicals are not known,” he says.

US activists say they are hopeful Sarangi’s and Trivedi’s visit to sympathetic lawmakers will prompt the formation of a small congressional delegation to India that would pressure the government to take legal action against Dow.

“There’s been no firm commitment yet, but it remains a very real possibility,” says Casey Harrell, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace.

Additional Source: CorpWatchIndia.org

OPEC chief warned Chavez about coup

By Greg Palast

May 13— The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, had advance warning of last month’s coup attempt against him from the secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Ali Rodriguez, allowing him to prepare an extraordinary plan which saved both his government and his life, an investigation has revealed.

Rodriguez telephoned Chavez from the Vienna headquarters of OPEC — of which Venezuela is an important member — several days before the attempted overthrow in April.

He said OPEC had learned that some Arab countries, later revealed to be Libya and Iraq, planned to call for a new oil embargo against the United States because of its support for Israel.

The OPEC chief warned Chavez that the US would prod a long-simmering coup into action to break any embargo threat. It was likely to act on Apr. 11, the day a general strike was due to start.

It was Venezuela which shattered the oil embargo of 1973 by replacing Arab oil with its own huge reserves.

The warning explains the swift and safe return of Chavez to power within two days of his Apr. 12 capture by military officers under the direction of the coup leader, Pedro Carmona.

Until now, it was unclear why Carmona -- who had declared himself president -- and the military chiefs who backed the coup surrendered without firing a shot.

The answer to the mystery is that several hundred pro-Chavez troops were hidden in secret corridors under Miraflores, the presidential palace.

Juan Barreto, a leader of Chavez’s party in the national assembly, was with Chavez when he was under siege.

Barreto said that Jose Baduel, chief of the paratroop division loyal to Chavez, had waited until Carmona was inside Miraflores.

Baduel then phoned Carmona to tell him that, with troops virtually under his chair, he was as much a hostage as Chavez. He gave Carmona 24 hours to return Chavez alive.

Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Carmona. The building was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez demonstrators who, alerted by a sympathetic foreign affairs minister, had marched on it from the Ranchos, one of the poorest barrios.

Chavez said that, after receiving the warning from OPEC, he had hoped to stave off the coup entirely by issuing a statement to mollify the Bush adminstration. He pledged that Venezuela would neither join nor tolerate a renewed oil embargo.

But Chavez had already incurred the US’s wrath by slashing Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding OPEC, causing oil prices to nearly double to over $20 a barrel.

His opponents had made it clear that they would not abide by OPEC production limits and would reverse his plan to double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies in Venezuela, principally the US petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil. The US government’s panic over the calls for an oil embargo, made public by Iraq and Libya on Apr. 8 and 9, also explains what Venezuelans see as the state department’s ill-concealed and clumsy support for the coup attempt.

Chavez said: “I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of two US military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters -- their names, whom they met with, what they said -- proof on video and on still photographs.”

Source: Guardian (UK)

US armed forces push for bioweapons development

Austin, Texas and Hamburg, Germany, May 8— US Navy and Air Force biotechnology laboratories are proposing development of offensive biological weapons. The weapons, genetically engineered microbes that attack items such as fuel, plastics, and asphalt, would violate federal and international law.

The proposals have been made by the Naval Research Laboratory (Washington, DC) and the Armstrong Laboratory (Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas). They date from 1997; but were recently submitted by the Marine Corps for a high-level assessment by a panel of the US National Academies of Science (NAS). The NAS panel has prepared a draft report; but it has not been released to the public.

The uncovering of these proposals for an offensive biological weapons program comes at a critical political juncture. The US has rejected a legally-binding system of United Nations inspections of suspected biological weapons facilities. At the same time, the Bush administration is aggressively accusing other countries of developing biological weapons and expanding its so-called “Axis of Evil” based in large part on allegations of foreign biological weapons development.

But it is increasingly apparent that there are serious questions about the United States’ own compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). While US allegations against other countries are generally undocumented, the proposals described in this press release were recently released to the Sunshine Project under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and have been placed on the internet for independent analysis.

In the murky world of biological weapons research, many technologies are “dual use,” that is, they have both offensive and peaceful applications. The alleged transfer of dual use technologies, such as vaccine research, is a basis of charges made against Cuba on May 6 by US Under Secretary of State John Bolton. The US armed forces documents released here, however, are not about “dual use” technology. They are explicit proposals for offensive weaponsmaking.

According to the Naval Research Laboratory, “It is the purpose of the proposed research to capitalize on the degradative potential of… naturally occurring microorganisms, and to engineer additional, focused degradative capabilities into [genetically modified microorganisms], to produce systems that will degrade the warfighting capabilities of potential adversaries.”

The Air Force proposes “genetically engineered catalysts made by bacteria that destroy... Catalysts can be engineered to destroy whatever war material is desired.” The proposals indicate these weapons might be used by all the armed forces, including the Special Forces and in peacekeeping and anti-narcotics operations.

These proposals are probably only the tip of the iceberg. For over one year, the Marine Corps has delayed response to a Sunshine Project FOIA request that now includes 147 unclassified documents. The two proposals described here are part of a recent first release of 8 items from that request. 139 related legal and weapons development documents are unreleased. The Marine Corps says the delay is due to a lack of manpower.

The National Academies are also suppressing related documents. As part of the Marine Corps-commissioned study, in 2001 at least 77 apparently chemical and biological weapons-related documents were deposited in the NAS Public Access Records File, a library open for inspection and copying by all persons. After the Sunshine Project requested copies of these documents on Mar. 12, 2002, the National Academies placed a “security hold” on the public file. High-ranking NAS officials have refused to explain who ordered the hold, or to offer a credible explanation as to why.

The Sunshine Project believes that NAS is under pressure from high-ranking US officials to “Enron” the public record to avoid release of politically sensitive material. Rather than assist a purge of the public record, NAS -- a leading US non-profit scientific body -- must condemn and release the proposals for illegal weapons that it has received.

The research proposed by the Air Force and Navy raises serious legal questions. Under the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act, development of biological weapons, including those that attack materials, is subject to federal criminal and civil penalties.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which the US and 143 other countries have ratified, prohibits development, acquisition, and stockpiling of any biological agents not justifiable for peaceful or prophylactic purposes. There is no such justification for the offensive research proposed by the Navy and Air Force. The proposals are certain to weigh heavily on all countries’ minds as they prepare for November’s reconstituted 5th Review Conference of the BTWC.

Source: The Sunshine Project