Grief, Guilt and Graffiti — Why the Legacy of “Killer Carbide” in Bhopal Must Not Fade from Public View
Colin Todhunter
This article reassembles existing evidence to challenge a dominant narrative of the Bhopal disaster as a closed historical tragedy, arguing instead that it remains an ongoing disaster.
While activists have previously called attention to this perspective, the article foregrounds it as its central theme. The criminality of Union Carbide is a continuing crisis that affects multiple generations.
By connecting Bhopal to the broader impacts of the Green Revolution and the chemical paradigm in Indian agriculture, the article also situates the issue within a wider critique of corporate power.
I first visited Bhopal in 1998 and saw the memorial statue to the victims of Union Carbide’s corporate criminality: a deadly gas leak from its pesticide plant in December 1984. There was quite a bit of graffiti in English and in Hindi. I can recall seeing “killer Carbide” and “Hang Anderson” in large letters. I recently returned to the site. The graffiti has gone, and the concrete statue is in a state on ongoing decay.
The Bhopal Gas Memorial Statue, also known as the “Statue of Mother and Child,” is a poignant public sculpture created by Dutch artist Ruth Waterman. Erected in 1985, it depicts a grieving woman with a hand over her face, holding her baby. Her posture and expression capture intense sorrow and trauma. Behind the woman, a child is seeking protection under her garment and yet another is reaching up for help.
The statue is positioned at the periphery of the former Union Carbide factory site.
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy dominated global headlines and was the leading news story worldwide as it unfolded on 3 December 1984. More than 40 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from a pesticide plant. Some 10,000 were said to have died in the first three days following the leak. The final death toll is estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000, with approximately 500,000 survivors grappling with a myriad of severe health problems, including respiratory ailments, blindness, cancers and genetic defects that continue to affect subsequent generations.
The tragedy was a consequence of substandard safety protocols, cost-cutting and inadequate staffing at the plant, which was majority-owned by the US-based Union Carbide Corporation (UCC).
In the immediate aftermath, the Indian government’s response was slow and inadequate. Although criminal cases were filed and several Union Carbide employees arrested, the most senior executives, including UCC chairman Warren Anderson, evaded meaningful prosecution.
Anderson was arrested briefly on his arrival in India but released on bail and never returned to face trial in India. The Indian government’s claim for $3.3 billion in damages was settled out of court in 1989 for $470 million—a sum widely criticised as grossly insufficient given the scale of human suffering.
Health crisis
Survivors of the gas leak continue to endure a broad spectrum of severe, long-term and chronic health consequences. These include debilitating respiratory problems such as pulmonary fibrosis, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, alongside neurological, musculoskeletal, ophthalmic issues like eye irritation, blindness and cataracts and various endocrine disorders. The immediate physical damage was relatively easier to assess, but the full extent of health-related damages, particularly chronic conditions, took many years to manifest, often emerging long after initial legal settlements were finalised.
This means that the true human cost of the disaster was severely underestimated during the early compensation frameworks, leading to inadequate and insufficient medical support for a population whose health was progressively deteriorating.
A significant challenge was the limited understanding of methyl isocyanate (MIC)’s toxicity in humans. No population had ever been subjected to such a massive quantity of MIC. The initial ignorance about MIC’s long-term toxicity, combined with the delayed manifestation of chronic health conditions, directly contributed to the severe underestimation of the true human cost. This profoundly affected the adequacy of compensation and the provision of ongoing medical care, leaving a legacy of unaddressed suffering.
Men who were in the womb at the time of the disaster exhibited a significantly higher risk of developing disabilities that affected their employment 15 years later. More strikingly, after 30 years, these individuals faced an eightfold higher risk of cancer compared to unexposed cohorts. For men who never relocated from the affected area, the cancer risk was even more alarming, reaching a 27-fold increase. This quantitative evidence of inherited health burdens unequivocally demonstrates that the disaster’s consequences are not limited to those directly exposed but extend to their descendants.
The disaster had devastating effects on the reproductive health of women. Academic studies document a fourfold increase in miscarriage rates following the gas leak, along with an elevated risk of stillbirth and neonatal mortality. Decades later, menstrual abnormalities and premature menopause have become common problems among exposed women and their female offspring.
Women residing within 100 km of Bhopal experienced a relative decrease in male births in 1985, with the proportion dropping from 64% in 1981-84 to 60%. This suggests a higher vulnerability of male foetuses to the external stressor of toxic gas exposure.
The most visible manifestation of intergenerational harm is the reported incidence of birth defects across three generations. These include severe conditions such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, Down’s syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, blindness, learning difficulties and gross motor delay. Compelling evidence indicates that genetic damage and chromosome instability persist in survivors, potentially playing a definitive role in the progression of cancer and other genetic diseases in subsequent generations. The consequences of toxic exposure are literally encoded within the genetic material of the affected population and their descendants.
Moreover, reports indicate high levels of mental stress, behavioural disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression. These mental health burdens are often exacerbated by the ongoing socioeconomic challenges faced by the affected communities.
The gas leak affected people across a substantially more widespread area than previously demonstrated, with health impacts visible in a 100 km radius around Bhopal. The original understanding of the gas leak’s impact was often confined to a 7 km radius. However, the documentation of impacts up to 100 km fundamentally alters the scale of the disaster, underscoring the inadequacy of historical relief efforts and the need for a re-evaluation of the affected population for medical and compensatory purposes.
Reports indicate that governmental interference has hindered systematic investigations into persisting and emerging health problems. Findings from critical studies, such as those by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Sambhavna Trust, have sometimes been contentious or even suppressed, raising concerns about transparency and the integrity of public health data.
A major impediment to effective treatment has been Union Carbide’s persistent refusal to fully identify all leaked reaction products and their precise toxicity. This lack of crucial information has actively prevented doctors from developing appropriate and targeted treatment protocols for victims. Furthermore, workers at the plant were reportedly denied access to their own medical reports, with the corporation asserting its right to withhold this vital medical information as protected trade secrets.
This corporate secrecy and alleged governmental suppression of data highlight a critical dimension of the ongoing disaster: the active suppression of information that could alleviate suffering and improve long-term outcomes.
Environmental crisis
Decades after the initial gas leak, thousands of tonnes of toxic waste remain buried in and around the abandoned Union Carbide plant site. Although the former factory site was officially turned over to the state of Madhya Pradesh in 1998, neither Dow Chemical, which acquired UCC in 2001, nor the Indian government has properly cleaned the site.
Toxic wastes from the factory site were channelled into three massive “solar evaporation ponds,” which subsequently leaked slowly into the surrounding soil and groundwater. Internal UCC memos from as early as 1982 indicated that these ponds were leaking even before the gas disaster, demonstrating a long-standing awareness of the contamination risk. This poisoned groundwater has become the primary source of water for daily use—washing, cooking and drinking—for families in the affected areas, impacting an estimated 200,000 people across 71 villages.
Analysis of the contaminated water has identified a range of hazardous pollutants, including organochlorines, dichlorobenzene, trichlorobenzene, hexachloride, heavy metals such as mercury, lead, chromium and nickel, as well as various pesticides. The contamination of groundwater represents a secret second disaster, a slow form of environmental violence that extends the disaster’s timeline and scope of harm far beyond the initial gas leak.
The environmental contamination has had a disproportionately severe impact on already vulnerable communities in Bhopal. The polluted soil and water are directly linked to chronic health problems and a high incidence of birth defects among the area’s inhabitants.
The victims of the disaster and those suffering from the ongoing contamination predominantly belong(ed) to low-income, marginalised and minority communities. This situation highlights the intersection of environmental degradation with social justice issues, demonstrating how environmental harm is unequally distributed, leading to compounded suffering for those least able to cope.
Major international human rights organisations and scholars have described Union Carbide’s actions in Bhopal as an example of environmental racism. Amnesty International, in particular, stated on the 40th anniversary of the disaster that “environmental racism enabled forty years of injustice for survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy”.
While a recent development in January 2025 involved the shifting of 337 metric tons of hazardous waste for incineration, activists contend that this amount represents not even 0.05% of the total waste present at the site. The Indian Supreme Court’s 2004 order to provide clean drinking water to residents underscores the chronic environmental neglect.
Furthermore, there are ongoing disputes regarding the safety protocols for the incineration process, and a comprehensive scientific assessment of the contamination’s full extent and impact remains elusive. This contradiction—between a visible, albeit small, cleanup effort and the vast, unaddressed contamination—demonstrates that, despite some symbolic actions, the core problem of comprehensive environmental remediation remains unresolved.
Corporate hubris and the shadow of the Green Revolution
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is emblematic not only of industrial negligence but also of the broader consequences of the Green Revolution’s chemical paradigm, revealing a stark irony between corporate promises and devastating realities.
Long before the gas leak, Union Carbide projected itself as a benevolent force shaping India’s agricultural future through its infamous “Hand of God” advertising campaign from the 1950s and 1960s. One ad depicted a giant, godlike hand hovering over Indian fields, pouring chemicals onto the soil as if bestowing a miraculous gift of modern science and industrial progress to the “backward” Indian farmer. The colossal hand poured pesticides from a laboratory flask, with a Union Carbide pesticide factory looming in the distance and Mumbai’s iconic Gateway of India visible.
This imagery promised a brave new world for India, supposedly liberated from pestilence and poverty through chemical science, conveniently glossing over colonial legacies, misguided policy direction post-independence and echoing Western paternalistic sentiments that positioned local expertise as inferior. The tragic irony is stark: Union Carbide’s propaganda and practices resulted in one of the worst industrial disasters in history. The pesticides produced there, intended to protect crops, have also contributed to widespread human health crises and ecological harm.
Punjab, the heartland of India’s Green Revolution, embraced chemical-intensive agriculture. It has unleashed a wave of environmental degradation and health problems. Pesticide overuse has contaminated soil and water, caused acute and chronic pesticide poisoning among farmers and rural communities and contributed to alarming rates of cancer, neurological disorders and reproductive health issues.
Scholars and activists such as Bhaskar Save and Vandana Shiva have been vocal critics of the Green Revolution’s chemical paradigm. Save, a farmer and environmentalist, emphasised the harm to soil fertility and biodiversity caused by chemical-intensive farming. Vandana Shiva has extensively documented how such practices undermine traditional knowledge, poison the environment and lead to farmer indebtedness and suicides.
The heavy reliance on synthetic pesticides and fertilisers, exemplified by the practices promoted by companies like Union Carbide, has created a vicious cycle of ecological damage: soil degradation, loss of indigenous seed varieties, water pollution and declining resilience of farming systems. Union Carbide’s “Hand of God” campaign encapsulates the ongoing hubris that believes technology and chemicals can overcome systemic socio-economic challenges and conquer nature—and too often the poor and the marginalised pay the price, whether small-scale farmers or, as in this case, the urban poor.
Justice denied
In February 1989, the Supreme Court of India directed a final settlement of $470 million for all Bhopal litigation. However, this amount was based on a severe underestimation of the actual number of victims. For instance, the settlement assumed approximately 3,000 deaths, whereas by March 2003, official figures revealed more than 15,180 awarded death claims. Similarly, the initial estimate of 100,000 injured contrasted sharply with over 553,015 actual injury claims by 2003.
A critical ethical lapse in the settlement process was its negotiation and agreement without any consultation with the Bhopal survivors themselves. This exclusion contributed significantly to the deep-seated perception of justice denied from the outset. The compensation disbursed averaged around $500 per victim, with many receiving as little as Rs 25,000. Most of these meagre funds were reportedly used for immediate healthcare needs and repayment of loans, failing to provide long-term support for the chronic health issues and economic hardships endured by the victims.
A major setback for victims occurred when the Supreme Court of India dismissed the Government of India’s curative petition, which had sought over $1 billion in enhanced compensation. This decision effectively brought an end to a long-standing legal avenue for increasing the original settlement amount. This ruling further entrenched the perception among victims and activists that the formal legal system has failed to deliver comprehensive justice.
Despite the civil settlement, a criminal case against Dow Chemical, as the successor to Union Carbide Corporation, has been pending for nearly 40 years. Dow Chemical made its first appearance in a Bhopal court in October 2023, after reportedly ignoring six previous summonses over 17 years. This appearance, however, has not led to a substantive engagement with the charges.
In 2010, seven former UCIL employees were convicted of causing death by negligence but received only two-year jail terms and nominal fines. Most were granted bail immediately, and none served significant prison time. The Indian government’s decision to settle early and forego harsher criminal prosecution effectively denied survivors their right to full justice. The courts’ reluctance to apply more stringent charges such as culpable homicide not amounting to murder further compounded this injustice.
Dow Chemical consistently asserts that Indian courts lack jurisdiction over the US firm. The company argues that it acquired UCC 17 years after the disaster (in 2001) and that UCC remains a separate corporate entity, implying no transfer of criminal liability. This legal strategy aims to avoid substantive engagement with the criminal charges by challenging the court’s authority over the company.
The prosecution, represented by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), counters Dow’s arguments by contending that jurisdiction is determined by the location where the crime occurred—undisputedly India. The CBI is actively seeking Dow’s business integration plan to ascertain the amount of UCC’s assets that were transferred to Dow, a crucial step in piercing the corporate veil and establishing a link to the original liability.
Victims of the gas tragedy assert that the Madhya Pradesh High Court had already resolved the jurisdiction issue in 2012, and therefore, Dow Chemical should be formally named as an accused in the case. The dismissal of the curative petition, coupled with Dow’s persistent legal manoeuvres to evade jurisdiction, highlights the profound systemic challenges in holding powerful multinational corporations accountable for historical environmental and human rights abuses, particularly across international legal boundaries.
Survivor groups and their supporters are driven by five core demands: the comprehensive cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater to international standards, a proper compensation payment to each Bhopal survivor, the criminal prosecution of Dow Chemical, the development of standardised practices for healthcare and research related to the disaster and the provision of monthly pensions for all widows of gas victims.
The Bhopal tragedy is a stark illustration of the risks inherent in transferring dirty or dangerous technologies to the Global South, where multinational companies often apply lower safety standards than in their home countries. This highlights a pattern where the pursuit of profit in developing nations comes at the irreversible expense of human lives and well-being, facilitated by a disregard for environmental and human rights.
The victims were overwhelmingly from the poorest and most marginalised communities, including lower castes and those living in informal settlements adjacent to the Union Carbide plant. These groups bore the brunt of the disaster, suffering immediate death, long-term health effects and deepened poverty due to disability, loss of employment and inadequate compensation.
The drive for profit was evident in the substandard safety measures, including poorly maintained equipment, inadequate worker training, a glaring lack of emergency response measures and poor communication protocols. Cost-cutting at the plant prioritised corporate interests over worker and community safety. The aftermath further highlighted deep-rooted inequities: poor victims struggled to access legal representation and adequate compensation, while Union Carbide (and Dow Chemical) leveraged its resources to limit liability and accountability.
The tragedy’s legacy is a stark indictment of power abused and justice denied, resulting in a humanitarian disgrace.
`
Colin Todhunter specialises in food, agriculture and development and is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his two free books Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order and Sickening Profits: The Global Food System’s Poisoned Food and Toxic Wealth here.
Bibliography
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Books and Academic Articles
- Eckerman, Ingrid. (2005). The Bhopal Saga: Causes and Consequences of the World’s Largest Industrial Disaster. Universities Press.
- Fortun, Kim. (2001). Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders. University of Chicago Press.
- Dhara, V. Ramana, & Dhara, Rosalie. (2002). The Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal: A review of health effects. Archives of Environmental Health, 57(5), 391-404.
- Shiva, Vandana. (1991). The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics. Zed Books.
- Stone, Glenn Davis. “New Histories of the Green Revolution.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 183, no. 2, 2017, pp. 170–174.
- Lapierre, Dominique, & Moro, Javier. (2002). Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster. Warner Books.
- Broughton, Edward. (2005). The Bhopal disaster and its aftermath: A review. Environmental Health, 4(1), 6. Reports and Institutional Sources
- Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). (Various Years). Health Effects of the Toxic Gas Leak from the Union Carbide Methyl Isocyanate Plant in Bhopal. Government of India.
- Sambhavna Trust Clinic. (Ongoing). Research and Reports on Bhopal Gas Tragedy Survivors. https://www.bhopal.org
- Greenpeace. (1999). The Bhopal Legacy: Toxic Contamination at the Former Union Carbide Factory Site. https://www.greenpeace.org/india/en/publication/1276/the-bhopal-legacy/
- Amnesty International. (2004). Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal Disaster 20 Years On. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa20/015/2004/en/
- Supreme Court of India. (1989). Union Carbide Corporation v. Union of India (Bhopal Settlement Case).
- Supreme Court of India. (2023). Judgment on Curative Petition for Enhanced Compensation in Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
- The Guardian. (2024). Bhopal: The world’s worst industrial disaster, 40 years on. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/bhopal-disaster-40-years-on
- BBC News. (2019). Bhopal gas disaster: The victims’ fight for justice. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30205189
- Al Jazeera. (2024). Bhopal: The slow violence of toxic legacy. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/12/3/bhopal-the-slow-violence-of-toxic-legacy
- Bhopal Group for Information and Action. (Ongoing). Survivor Testimonies and Campaign Updates. https://www.bhopal.net
- Save, Bhaskar. (2006). Open Letter to the Indian Agriculture Minister: The Great Agricultural Deception. Retrieved from https://greatagriculturalchallenge.wordpress.com/the-great-agricultural-challenge/preface/register/bhaskar-save%E2%80%99s-open-letter/
Legal and Policy Documents
News and Magazine Articles
Activist and Survivor Testimonies
Farmer and Activist Perspectives
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This is a short summary of exactly what is wrong with this world, on so many levels. Even if these people were to be compensated financially it would not bring back the lost lives nor the health of those suffering. It is at best an inferior gesture, but let’s face it, these people won’t even get as much.
No one is asking for their food to be sprayed with pesticides, the effects of which are obviously devastating as shown through this disaster (though those that consume sprayed foods just have it in smaller doses over a longer period of time), but hey, there is money to be made and therefore we have no say in this matter. This is obviously a ‘concentrated’ example but the truth is land everywhere is contaminated through the use of toxic chemicals (this story is hardly unique) and it would take a monumental effort (at considerable cost) to clean it up.
So, no record of increased incidences of cancers in the women? Their reproductive health protected them in some magical way? Typical male dominated alopathic medicals.
Corporate power and the tyranny of contract. Nothing will ever be done to rebalance.
Archetypal example of the true enemy of human health: industrial pollution. The Reagan/Thatcher privatization movement began the gutting of regulation protecting humans from unaccountable capitalist risk taking. Later morphed into and covered up by manufactured Climate Change mass hysteria, pollution continues unabated. Both Parties have shepherded societies into incremental privatization and deregulation of everything that continues until we either pull their authority to decide, or the bottom 90% is corralled into their final solution.
‘Capitalist risk-taking’. But ‘capitalism’ is just the name of an economic system, not of a moral entity or agent choosing to endanger others for profit or power. Only individuals and groups of human decision-makers, whether capitalist, communist or eskimo, are responsible for evil decisions, actions, climate hysteria and the like. ‘Capitalist’ and ‘evil’ are not the same; conflating them is an ancient leftist delusion and a key weapon for attacking political rivals.
And any individuals who balk at making a profit – even making a profit in ways that could endanger others – will be relegated either to the mail room or the highway.
Money is the very essence of Capitalism, profit being its ultimate expression. Any capitalist enterprise that makes no profit will soon be swept aside by a more profitable enterprise. Among the many reasons why Capitalism is – and will remain – the most successful economic system in human history is the fact that it engages – and rewards – more human vices than any other system.
And like any economic system, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And since, more than any other system, it provides a little something for almost everyone, it can count on the full support of the political and military systems of a nation. It constantly needs natural resources, so it frequently partners with the military to get those resources.
All human systems have a little “evil” built in; Capitalism just has more.
Yes, absolutely. No one talks about “pollution” anymore. Which, as a consumer, I feel that I contribute to.
The conception of “sustainability” and “carbon free” has freed us all from really taking a look and acting upon it.
Lots of chemicals are toxic to humans. Phosgene, for example, isn’t just a chemical weapon that was widely used in WW1 but also widely used in fabric dyeing (that’s what it was first developed for). The issue is really whether you should use this type of material in societies that lack the resources and oversight to handle it safely. The Union Carbide incident, for example, shows a pattern of neglected maintenance and an overbearing “it will be all right on the night” managerial mindset. (Exactly the same mindset that created Chernobyl, BTW.)
Forget some city in In dia where there are a billion people trying to live..My government killed me in Viet-Nan in 1969..
The highly toxic chemical gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal was a very horrific and extremely tragic event. I was in my senior school years in Bombay at that time, and as a rare teenager who flipped through newspapers I recollect the tragedy from the headlines, the stories, and the pictures back then. I felt the horrors.
Now, when I look back, I can connect some (not all) of the dots. A chemical company, manufacturing toxic insecticides, supplying not just to domestic market in India but around the world as well. And, zilch safety measures due to heavy profit extraction.
Countries like China, India, Indonesia, Brazil get these factories. The governments of these countries, who are infiltrated and captured by world oligarchy’s front men and middle-men, bend backwards and accomodate these disastrous factories.
Maybe that gas leak was deliberate. Given what we know now about how things are scripted by world oligarchs, it can’t be ruled out. Killing large numbers of peoples in one go with a single incident would suit their genocidal and maniacal agendas.
After the Carbide gas tragedy, foreign companies were kept out for some years, although now Bayer manufactures and sells the same products to India’s farmers through cash-rich marketing and distribution push, and subversion of India’s local rules, which in any case have got diluted over the years to allow for any toxicity in these pesticides, weedicides, and fungicides.
Indian companies themselves took the lead and one saw the Tata group get into it in a big way. Reputed name, Tatas, is nothing but a tool for the oligarchy to use to spew whatever filth they want in countries like India. So are the Birlas, Ambanis, Murthys, Nilekanis, Nadars, Mittals etc.
There are many more angles I am aware of now, and can write about. But I have to get back to my employer’s deadlines.
I recently watched a movie called “Dark Waters”, starring Mark Ruffulo, about the Dupont mess in West Virginia in the late 90’s.
Good movie. Tragic story. But par for the course.
So when people say “the government would never…..”, I don’t refer them to scientific studies or independent media, I just recommend good old Hollywood.
Because it is a true story that anyone can understand. “Grasp”, maybe not. But at least understand.
Thank you for this Bhopal reminder.
One more sad story from the Leftist do-gooders. But what about solutions to the story?
Whether or not this following story is isolated, true or not, I like that someone are trying to do the right thing: Working along with nature, and not forcing nature!
China using crabs in their rice fields. A trick known from ancient times, but today trial in big scale. https://youtu.be/yf4r7O10K2s . Thats the way to go.
You ask for solutions – I’ll give you one: force international corporations to pay for their mistakes. Ah! but who’s big and bold and strong enough to make that happen – that’s the question.
Outlaw limited liability.
We will never learn. Everything the corporate shills say is a lie:
Starmer…. ‘Israel’s action is appalling’. Whilst giving them military support and weapons.
You only get into power if you have the Zionist lobby.
If you are a Zionist you are the enemy of the people. Is that not right GB News??? Believe them if you like.
The Zionists seems to pay the best. We are for sale most of us. Ready to sell our butt for a few bucks.
The amount of people who are not for sale, can stand on my little finger’s nail.
A UNIVERSAL language foisted upon us by magi-cians
Nonna said it came by ship
SPELLS were CAST
a REVERSAL of self
inverse
ENGLISH
INK – LEASH
Abandon all CONTRACTS
WE were defrauded
India needs another Ghandi.
Then again, he would probably be ‘despatched’ before he could deliver in these times.
I wonder if the Turds who rule believe in Karma?
China needs another Mao.
His Great Leap Forward created the Great Famine with its four pests campaigns while his Cultural Revolution wiped out traditional Chinese culture. Millions of sparrows were killed.
I wonder if the CCP kader really believes in equality in their single lifespan?
Considering China’s current economic dominance, amazing infrastructure and excellent education system, you’ve gotta wonder how much of the Western propaganda against Mao was fake.
I have nervous anticipation: Will that small country that
always acts with wilful impunity really assassinate Greta ?
No, it will not. It held off assassinating Medea Benjamin when she was on Freedom Flotillas that were attacked – and Ms Benjamin truly is a thorn in their side. Whereas Greta is perhaps a bit less passionate and a lot more PR savvy.
Corporate consumerism requires that we suffer psychological, physical and environmental disease, and if necessary die, for profit. -David Edwards 1996
We are not going to compete and consume our way out of this existential crisis. Capitalism will never make it more profitable to leave a tree standing than cut it down, or to leave fuel sources in the ground rather than dig them up. Markets cannot navigate us through the crisis, no matter how “free” you make them. The problem is capitalism itself, not the wrong kind of it. -Caitlin Johnstone 2020
Okey. So Communism is the Endlösung. Gulag camps to all capitalists, Mao dress conformity. Forced Marx education in the little red book.
Cant we agree that the Ecclesiastes Book of the Bible is correct when they say Everything Is Futile, There is Nothing new under the Sun??
“What is has always been, and what has been will always be again”, (Erik Nielsen said that in a historic moment, June 2025)
German railroad official Carsten Weidenhaupt
has released a new album. One of the tracks is
named “Love is an illusion”. Looks very much
like he’s finally got his divorce behind him too.
Imagine that the Jew, as the Übervater, repre-
sented both the capitalist Jews from the West
and the communist Jews from the East. He tur-
ned his divided victory into an icon. That is pu-
re cohencidence, everything else anti-Semitism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Rosenthal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_a_Flag_over_the_Reichstag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Khaldei
In 2023, India exported $11.4B of Rice, making it the largest exporter of Rice (out of 184) in the world. During the same year, Rice were the 6th most exported product (out of 1,212) in India. In 2023, the main destinations of India’s Rice exports were: Saudi Arabia ($1.29B), Iran ($734M), Iraq ($733M), Benin ($518M), and UAE ($463M).
Indians are the main work force in Saudi Arabia, without rice to eat they’d
probably lose their ‘cultural identity’…
Like the Chinese, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indonesians, Japanese, Thai etc.? Half the world population.
We are too many useless rice eaters here on the planet. If there had been fewer people here, an accident like this one would never had happened. Just my opinion.
What planet are you from?
I assume once again you are being ironic. But your disguise of irony is, to quote Winston Churchill regarding a blessing in disguise: “At the moment it is quite effectively disguised.”
I know.
Americans are not to irony. Both they and chatgpt dont understand it, and that is why it is so useful and funny (some times) :-D.
The use of toxic gases in WW1 opened the gates of hell.
“I Wouldn’t Change Me For Any-
one”. Yes, then die unloved, but
don’t make such a fuss about it.
I still maintain that “Dave Hewson” is a fake identity
(just like “Fantômas”), he never existed as a person.
The music is produced entirely in Germany, by some-
what good “musicians”, but somewhat bad impostors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Hewson_(composer)
https://soundcloud.com/davehewson/sets/theremintopia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
The more or less only British Hewson in the pop
music business was Peter, interestingly enough
had a connection to Germany. Vince Clarke, with
whom we worked on the concept for the album
“Chorus” in Hamburg, had released a song with
the 15 year older singer on his label Reset in 1984.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicory_Tip
https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/319-winter-1985/we-all-live-in-bhopal/
Undermining traditional knowledge, poisoning environment, indebting farmers? Hey what’s not to like? We’ve got to get the population down to a billion or so and wittering on about the climate catastrophe doesn’t seem to working. But it’s still not enough: a full scale war between India and Pakistan looks like a good option, that should definitely be encouraged.(Irony alert for the literal minded)
Not enough adventures right here at home, you got to go overseas!
If that happened in the US, the lawyers would have had a field day. Such a clear cut case.
Multi-billion dollar lawsuits would have flown around the place like confetti. Dow Chemical would never have bought Union Carbide, since Union Carbide would have gone bankrupt and their civil liability insurers would have been nailed to a cross.
I find it strange that in these corporate manslaughter or negligance cases that the relatives of the dead or injured or those injured thenselves especially terminally ill ones never seem to seek other forms of justice when the system lets them down. That would certainly cause company executives to think twice about cost cutting and allowing sloppy health and safety practices.
They sure did get the East Palestine, Ohio, 3 February 2023
train derailment, quickly off the front page… Buried it !!
“We All Live In Bhopal” !
Yes, but the US can now send its deadly manufacturing industries to third-world countries whose leaders bend over for a few quid in a Swiss bank.
Corporate law now allows corporations to make legal inroads against democratic countries in court if they are not allowed to exploit. These multinational global criminals and the World Bank are behind everything wrong.
Don’t forget: the multi-billion dollar lawsuits against Monsanto for its glyphosate didn’t deter Bayer from buying Monsanto.
Bayer would never have bought Monsanto had they realised the future liabilities. These are not for deaths but for cancers. Bayer have so far paid around $11 billion to 100,000 claimants, an average of $110,000 per claimant. That is a small payout per person, since the true value would have already bankrupted Bayer, the parent company. Better something than nothing. Bayer has also set aside huge sums for future claims since it is a big enough company with future revenues sufficient to stay in business. However, even Bayer is considering putting its Monsanto subsidiary into Chapter 11 bankruptcy to draw a line under the losses.
If the Bhopal deaths of 15,000 – 20,000 had occured on US soil plus 500,000 people injured the claims would have been mind boggling. Not sure what the average payout for a death or injury in the mid-1980 to early 1990s would have been plus the legal fees but I have no doubt that Union Carbide would have been bankrupted.
The following is an interesting read on the Monsanto payouts and the story to date.
https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/roundup-lawsuit.html
The corporate drive for profit – will always outweigh the safety of the Global Souths population especially in poorer nations – the huge corporations have, a plethora of highly paid corporate lawyers, with a huge defence budget at their disposal – local corruption in the judiciary, police etc adds weight to gain a favourable outcome in any court case, that is brought against them – court cases that can take years to reach a conclusion – and even then if they lose the huge profits they make – easily offsets any payouts.
Modi has embraced all manner of chemicals in agriculture – he is enamoured with the likes of Bill gates and Peter Theil – and another article in Off-Guardian added that Indian had created genome edited rice varieties.
The locals will always be the first to suffer, at the hands of the huge ruthless foreign corporations – who always put profit before safety.
I think its the people that do it, in the name of the corporation.
India is a shithole country. Whattabout China. Do they use Union Carbide chemical too to make their rice? Is Xi chemical digital horny like Modi?
No. China is natural the all way through as they are using ducks as fertilizer. Double effect in nutrients and food! https://youtu.be/e1ZcIDT2esE Proof.
India is one of the wealthiest country on Earth – which is why Britain fought long and hard to keep it. It is also one of the countries subject to “weather warfare” by the US military. Always remember: where Gates goes (or tries to go), the Pentagon cannot be far behind.
You are probably right. I just cant remember they had any champion in heavy weight.
Mother Teresa was Albanian and Catholic. Indira Ghandi’s sit down philosophy Im not sure is due with so many poor and hungry populations. A cow is holy. 300 mio Indians are “small people”.
Chicken in rice and curry is the only good thing I can connect with India.
Surely, surely, the same poisonous gas used to create pesticides at Bhopal doesn’t have the same ingredients as those used to spray crops, which we then eat???
Between chemical fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, preservatives, and genetic modification, along with cling film plastic packaging. Its no wonder we are in the Kali Yuga.
The two most common forms of food wrapping for domestic use, cling film with its microplastics and foil made from aluminium, the leading cause of dementia and Alzheimer’s. Not to mention plastic packaging for water, milk, and pretty much every other liquid we ingest. Along with polysterene trays for meat and plastics for fruit and vegetables. Even before supermarkets completely took over the food retailing business along came Tupperware in the 1970s and its imitators for storing all manner of foods at home rather than using glass or ceramic storage containers.
No wonder people were healthier when they bought loose produce from the independent specialist retailers with minimal or no packaging. Greaseproof or just plain paper for wrapping the meat and fish, paper bags for fruit and vegetables and glass bottles for the liquids.
Not forgetting the aluminium in vaccines causing AUTISM