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3 December

It's twenty years exactly since a massive poison gas leak at Union Carbide's Bhopal chemical plant in India caused one of the worst industrial disasters in history. An estimated 20,000 people have so far died as a result, and 120,000 still suffer from illnesses caused by the leak.

Union Carbide is now owned by Dow Chemicals, which refuses to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water for the people of Bhopal, whose wells are still poisoned, or compensate the surviving victims. Dow also refuses to disclose the composition of the gas leak - information that doctors could use to properly treat the victims.

Here is the website of Dow Chemicals.

Here is a website that looks very much like the website of Dow Chemicals. If you look closer, though, you'll see some differences; most notably that this second site is more honest about how this company actually makes its money.

This morning, someone claiming to be a spokesman for Dow gave an interview to the BBC, in which he accepted responsibility for the Bhopal disaster and promised to fully compensate the victims. It took the BBC a while to work out they'd been spoofed by people who wanted to draw attention to the anniversary and to Dow's continued and shameful lies about what happened that night.

There's no confirmation yet, but something tells me this was the work of the Yes Men, a pair of genius imposters who are gradually dismantling capitalism from within, armed only with chutzpah and satire. The Yes Men - creators of the spoof Dow site - are a shaft of light in this grubby world. Here is an interview I did with one of them a few years back, which was a lot of fun to write.

Here, more importantly, is a website at which you can learn more about Bhopal, and make a donation to help the victims.

And if you hear anyone else from Dow on the radio today, listen very carefully.

Posted by paul at December 3, 2004 01:55 PM

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