That’s what the people of Bhopal India were told to do when the “compensation” was announced 24 years ago. That’s after 2 years of LawyerFights over Limited Liability and “Tort Reform”. The Reaganites including Ron Paul, the Dad-part of the Paul and Paul Father-son Hate Team, rather than celebrate the judgment of 12,400 rupees per each dead Indian, bitched and whined that it was Too Much.
The BAIL for the Guilty Parties, or at least the lower level Guilty parties, nine in all, one deceased and one “hiding” in a Country Club gated community on Long Island, was 25,000 rupees apiece. $502. For 25,000 counts of Murder. That’s three times the “official” count. The official count was 8000 initially and another 9000 since.
If Union Carbide wants to call that libel or slander, it would be up to them to prove it.
The Union Carbide Corporation, the truly guilty party, is not required to meet the responsibilities of a Real Human Citizen even though they have more “rights” than a real human citizen. Ron and Rand Paul and all the other Reaganite Corporate Sucks say Amen.
I was charged with possession of a knife that doesn’t fold up in Texas once, the bail for that was $800. The actual BOND for it was $2000. You know, that makes me feel especially hard core when my bond for merely carrying a knife was 4 times that for 25,000 counts of Capital Murder.
Incidentally, the BBC report only counts the initially killed, not those who have died subsequently. The clinic that Union Carbide opened to “treat the injured” closed about 12 years ago. The residues of that explosion and all the accumulated Union Carbide waste chemicals over the decades are still killing people. Sans the $253 payout per dead kid.
Maybe the criminals at British Petroleum will receive a stiffer payment. It would be next to impossible for the punishment to be lighter than that.
No, Really. Look up “impossible” in the dictionary and right next to it will be a picture of somebody getting a lighter slap on the wrist for a heinous crime.
But, after all, the economic victims of BP are (for now) mostly American citizens, a large part of them White and there’s even the damage to some of the Playground Beaches where the richest like to go, when their Very Important Jobs holding down their office chairs, keeping them from drifting off into space, become too wearisome and they need a break.
I figure one oil stained beach on a Private Island will fetch more in damages than 25,000 dead Indians.
Jonah, be sure to write a letter to your ‘Mr Obama’ and ask him to slap Union Carbide Corporation hard on the wrist when he visits India later this month. It’s heavy pressure from involved activists like yourself and Eric that will surely push him out of the BP/ Massey/ Bhopal camp and into the Paradise of Progressive Activism that you surely misrepresent along with all the other local yokel CS Democratic Party voters who sometimes put a Obama/Biden bumpersticker on their cars.