The New York Times reported this week that the refinery in Gebeng, just 70 kilometres north of Najib’s Pekan constituency,
By Shannon Teoh A nation that cannot uphold its law cannot preserve its order. When Anderson was smuggled out to safety, the authority of state abandoned the responsibility of state. Excuses, evasions and lies have shifted over 26 years; this central truth has not.
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Anwar: This issue is important but the public is generally not well-versed in the negative effects. I propose we prepare leaflets to be distributed.
The massive earthquake in Japan yesterday and the resulting tsunami has also added fears about the plant in Malaysia’s east coast which faces the Pacific Rim’s ring of fire, the world’s active volcanic region. The 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan and the 10-metre high tsunami it sent surging into cities and villages, sweeping away everything in its path.
Australian mining company Lynas Corporation has begun construction of the rare earth refinery in Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s home state, raising fears of a repeat of the radiation pollution in Bukit Merah, Perak that has been linked to at least eight leukemia cases in the local community there.
The Asian Rare Earth plant is now the subject of a quiet US$100 million (RM303 million) cleanup exercise by Mitsubishi Chemical which shut down the facility nearly two decades ago.
“This issue is important but the public is generally not well-versed in the negative effects. I propose we prepare leaflets to be distributed,” the opposition leader wrote to his Pakatan Rakyat (PR) colleagues in an email
.Anwar has been going around the country for ceramahs to promote his PR’s economic programmes and promises in its Buku Jingga for the next general elections, widely expected to be held this year.
.Anwar has been going around the country for ceramahs to promote his PR’s economic programmes and promises in its Buku Jingga for the next general elections, widely expected to be held this year.
The New York Times reported this week that the refinery in Gebeng, just 70 kilometres north of Najib’s Pekan constituency, will be the first such plant outside China in nearly three decades.
Environmental hazards have made other countries wary of rare earth processing, leaving China to control 95 per cent of global supply of rare earth metals.
The metals are crucial to high technology products such as the Apple iPhone, Toyota Prius and Boeing’s smart bombs.
The newspaper said that if prices of the metals stayed at current levels, the Lynas plant would generate over RM5 billion a year in exports for Malaysia, or nearly one per cent of its entire economy.
However, Lynas corporate and business development vice president Matthew James has denied that the plant will be dangerous and told The Malaysian Insider that radiation will be minimal as the raw material used has only 2 per cent of the thorium found in the material processed in Bukit Merah.
Thorium is the radioactive element found in nearly all rare earth deposits.
PKR vice president Fuziah Salleh, who is also Kuantan MP, responded saying that a local group of citizens has been trying to raise awareness there and has echoed Anwar’s call to drum up the issue.
PAS Youth chief Nasrudin Tantawi has also questioned the need for theplant to be located in Gebeng, some 2,500 kilometres away from Lynas’ mine in Mount Weld, Australia.
“Are the wide deserts of Australia not enough to build this factory if it is really safe as they say it is?” said Nasrudin.
James had told The Malaysian Insider that the company chose Malaysia instead of refining the ore in Australia, due to savings in already available infrastructure and labour.
He said that the plant would need a larger supply of water, natural gas, industrial land and chemicals such as lime and sulphuric and hydrochloric acid — all readily available in Malaysia.
“Each container contains about US$1 million (RM3.04 million) of rare earth so the transport cost is negligible,” James said.
James also said that the Kuantan facility, located in the Gebeng industrial area, will be the largest rare earth processing plant in the world once completed next year
'Justice' for Bhopal is just political farce
By M J Akbar
Cynicism is never irrational. The irrational, often wrong, sometimes right, are impelled by instinct, heart or even conscience. Cynics are morality-proof. They prefer data to truth.
Delhi has set the gold standard for cynicism. It operates on four axioms: public memory is a dwarf; anger is effervescent; media can be massaged at the appropriate moment; any public crisis can be assuaged with crumbs, while the promotion of private interests continues off-screen.
Jairam Ramesh’s promise of a Green Tribunal in Bhopal is a classical instance of a crumb dipped in the pickle of hypocrisy. Where was this or any other tribunal in the last 26 years when the dead, the deformed and blind babies and the stillborn fetuses were a reminder that justice must be done? Or is this tribunal meant for the next onslaught by the dogs of chemical war upon the sleeping slums of Bhopal? Who was Veerappa Moily trying to fool when he claimed that the case against Warren Anderson had not been closed? Why doesn’t he keep the case open for a few more years, until God closes the chapter by taking Anderson away to whichever destination has been allotted to the butcher of Bhopal? A Group of Ministers has been appointed — merely to buy time until the return of amnesia.
The true Bhopal verdict was delivered within four days of the tragedy, in December 1984, not on June 7, 2010, when Anderson was smuggled out of Bhopal on a state government aircraft and then put on a plane to America. Since then we have witnessed a pretend-justice farce played out by government, police and the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The last is most culpable, since we hold a Chief Justice of India like A M Ahmadi to higher standards of probity than we do politicians or policemen. Ahmadi got his proper thank you note after he retired.
Chief judicial magistrate Mohan Tiwari’s judgment served only one useful purpose. The sheer scale of its magnanimity towards the accused lit a fuse under the volcano of collective guilt. The lava is spewing from myriad crevices, scorching and burning many-layered masks that have hidden deceit for a generation. As memories were stoked, officials, some perhaps frustrated by the fact that their silence had not been rewarded, revealed how successive governments had intervened to slow down the judicial process and sabotage any chance of Anderson’s extradition. Union Carbide and its collaborators, including Indians of course, have sustained themselves with a lie, that it was an Indian disaster since the plant was built and run by Indians. The design is an exact replica of an American plant, and an American who was terrified of being tried in India was in charge of management.
The political establishment assumed that June 7 would be just another day in a long calendar, possibly punctuated by an occasional, futile scream. The court was fortified, and entry denied to petitioners, victims and media. My one memory of this courtroom, gleaned from television, shall be of the smug grin of an obese policemen laughing at two old women, their faces contorted by rage and frustration, who knew that the system which had stolen their lives had also cheated their children in death.
Trust me: if thousands of politicians, or their cousins, the nouveau riche, had died on that apocalyptic night in Bhopal, Anderson would still be in an Indian prison, rather than in America, protected by his company, and the company that his company keeps. But only the poor died in Bhopal. We treat our poor as dispensable chattel whose death is meaningless in the economic calculus, since there is no shortage of supply. Bhopal is class war.
Is it surprising — or not? — that while even the Obama administration jumped in with some gratuitous advice, Dr Manmohan Singh had nothing to say? Perhaps the Prime Minister would have been repetitive. In essence, the signal from Washington and Delhi is the same: forget the dead, get on with multinational life.
Barack Obama was not elected to ensure justice for the Indian victim. He is in the White House to protect American business, and defend the two-laws theory that motivates American international relations, whether in war or peace. When 11 American workers were killed in an oil rig blow-up in the Gulf of Mexico, Washington demanded $1.5 billion from BP. Nearly 20,000 dead in Bhopal, half a million affected, and the total compensation is $470 million. Do the math. Obama has promised to penalize BP for the current oil spill to the extent of many billions of dollars. Magistrate Manoj Tiwari wants only Rs 5 lakh as reparation from Carbide for mass slaughter.
When Exxon was fined $5 billion for the Alaska oil spill, nearly $40,000 was spent on the rehabilitation of every affected sea otter. The victims of Bhopal are, so far, entitled to $200 each.
Don’t do the math. It may turn you into a cynic.
It is odd that the government should have chosen law and order as its final alibi after some exhausting self-laceration in its search for a credible explanation for the escape of Union Carbide’s Warren Anderson on December 7, 1984.By M J Akbar
Trust me: if thousands of politicians, or their cousins, the nouveau riche, had died on that apocalyptic night in Bhopal, Anderson would still be in an Indian prison, rather than in America, protected by his company, and the company that his company keeps. But only the poor died in Bhopal. We treat our poor as dispensable chattel whose death is meaningless in the economic calculus, since there is no shortage of supply. Bhopal is class war.which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it… ... The Irrational Knot (1905). To understand a saint, you must hear the ... You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. ...
Cynicism is never irrational. The irrational, often wrong, sometimes right, are impelled by instinct, heart or even conscience. Cynics are morality-proof. They prefer data to truth.
Delhi has set the gold standard for cynicism. It operates on four axioms: public memory is a dwarf; anger is effervescent; media can be massaged at the appropriate moment; any public crisis can be assuaged with crumbs, while the promotion of private interests continues off-screen.
Jairam Ramesh’s promise of a Green Tribunal in Bhopal is a classical instance of a crumb dipped in the pickle of hypocrisy. Where was this or any other tribunal in the last 26 years when the dead, the deformed and blind babies and the stillborn fetuses were a reminder that justice must be done? Or is this tribunal meant for the next onslaught by the dogs of chemical war upon the sleeping slums of Bhopal? Who was Veerappa Moily trying to fool when he claimed that the case against Warren Anderson had not been closed? Why doesn’t he keep the case open for a few more years, until God closes the chapter by taking Anderson away to whichever destination has been allotted to the butcher of Bhopal? A Group of Ministers has been appointed — merely to buy time until the return of amnesia.
The true Bhopal verdict was delivered within four days of the tragedy, in December 1984, not on June 7, 2010, when Anderson was smuggled out of Bhopal on a state government aircraft and then put on a plane to America. Since then we have witnessed a pretend-justice farce played out by government, police and the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The last is most culpable, since we hold a Chief Justice of India like A M Ahmadi to higher standards of probity than we do politicians or policemen. Ahmadi got his proper thank you note after he retired.
Chief judicial magistrate Mohan Tiwari’s judgment served only one useful purpose. The sheer scale of its magnanimity towards the accused lit a fuse under the volcano of collective guilt. The lava is spewing from myriad crevices, scorching and burning many-layered masks that have hidden deceit for a generation. As memories were stoked, officials, some perhaps frustrated by the fact that their silence had not been rewarded, revealed how successive governments had intervened to slow down the judicial process and sabotage any chance of Anderson’s extradition. Union Carbide and its collaborators, including Indians of course, have sustained themselves with a lie, that it was an Indian disaster since the plant was built and run by Indians. The design is an exact replica of an American plant, and an American who was terrified of being tried in India was in charge of management.
The political establishment assumed that June 7 would be just another day in a long calendar, possibly punctuated by an occasional, futile scream. The court was fortified, and entry denied to petitioners, victims and media. My one memory of this courtroom, gleaned from television, shall be of the smug grin of an obese policemen laughing at two old women, their faces contorted by rage and frustration, who knew that the system which had stolen their lives had also cheated their children in death.
Trust me: if thousands of politicians, or their cousins, the nouveau riche, had died on that apocalyptic night in Bhopal, Anderson would still be in an Indian prison, rather than in America, protected by his company, and the company that his company keeps. But only the poor died in Bhopal. We treat our poor as dispensable chattel whose death is meaningless in the economic calculus, since there is no shortage of supply. Bhopal is class war.
Is it surprising — or not? — that while even the Obama administration jumped in with some gratuitous advice, Dr Manmohan Singh had nothing to say? Perhaps the Prime Minister would have been repetitive. In essence, the signal from Washington and Delhi is the same: forget the dead, get on with multinational life.
Barack Obama was not elected to ensure justice for the Indian victim. He is in the White House to protect American business, and defend the two-laws theory that motivates American international relations, whether in war or peace. When 11 American workers were killed in an oil rig blow-up in the Gulf of Mexico, Washington demanded $1.5 billion from BP. Nearly 20,000 dead in Bhopal, half a million affected, and the total compensation is $470 million. Do the math. Obama has promised to penalize BP for the current oil spill to the extent of many billions of dollars. Magistrate Manoj Tiwari wants only Rs 5 lakh as reparation from Carbide for mass slaughter.
When Exxon was fined $5 billion for the Alaska oil spill, nearly $40,000 was spent on the rehabilitation of every affected sea otter. The victims of Bhopal are, so far, entitled to $200 each.
Don’t do the math. It may turn you into a cynic.
Why do we say “law and order” rather than “order and law”? Simple. Law comes before order. Law defines the nature of order. Law is the difference between civilization and chaos. Law is evolutionary: the edicts of tribes, chiefs and dynasties lifted human societies from scattered peril to structured coexistence. The laws of democracy have vaulted us to the acme of social cohesion, for they eliminated arbitrary diktat and introduced collective will. The divine right of kings is dead; it has been reborn as the secular right of an elected Parliament.
A nation that cannot uphold its law cannot preserve its order. When Anderson was smuggled out to safety, the authority of state abandoned the responsibility of state. Excuses, evasions and lies have shifted over 26 years; this central truth has not.
Unsurprisingly, Anderson sneered at the establishment that knelt before him; contempt is the umbilical chord of the colonial, or neo-colonial, relationship. The crux of the Bhopal tragedy is summed up in a few sentences uttered by Anderson as he was escorted out of India on December 7, 1984: “House arrest or no house arrest, or bail or no bail, I am free to go home…There is a law of the United States… India, bye bye, thank you.”
‘House or no house arrest’: he could not care a damn about those funny-looking policemen (in lathis and khaki shorts?) who had dared to arrest a pillar of the American corporate establishment. ‘Bail or no bail’: what was a rotten piece of paper signed in an Indian court worth to a lord of Wall Street? Not even the decency of silence. Anderson was publicly, even proudly, contemptuous of those who did not have the courage to interrupt his freedom for a mere industrial disaster in which a few thousand semi-slave Indians had been gassed to death within hours and thousands more would die over years.
‘There is a law in the United States’: Anderson had twigged on to a basic truth that the law is a malleable reality for those who are “well-connected” in India. How could Anderson have respect for India’s law when those entrusted with its sanctity had defiled it? Anderson laughed at Indian law, and jeered at the Indian state. Compare this with the fact that his company was scared witless at the prospect of an American trial. Carbide fought hard, and successfully, with predictable help from a comprador Indian establishment, to shift the trial from America to India. Their subsequent collusion with Indian courts touched Supreme heights.
British Petroleum knew the perils of entanglement with American justice and shelled out within six weeks of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Big Oil (which is far bigger than Big Chemical) has been forced to put aside $20 billion for the repair of the environment after an ecological disaster that has not killed a single innocent human being. Technically, BP need not have paid more than $75 million. The first demand on Carbide, 26 years ago was for $15 billion. It has paid the equivalent of just one billion dollars (at today’s prices) for the death of nearly 20,000 people and the horrific maiming of over 100,000.
Barack Obama slipped on a bit of oil himself when the spill began. He thought playing to the gallery would subdue the clamour, while BP contained the damage. He upped the ante (it became an environmental 9/11) even while his National Guard helped BP by hiding affected bird-life from media cameras. Obama began to taunt the British in British Petroleum, perhaps because he found it easier to attack a nation than a multinational; but public opinion was not to be mollified by rhetoric.
BP paid America out of fear, not because of a demand order from its conscience. Carbide had nothing to fear, and never possessed a conscience. QED. BP will not pay a dividend this year. Carbide paid a dividend even after Bhopal.
‘India, bye bye, thank you’: those famous last Anderson words. Bye bye; this is a divorce, not a separation. There might be some alimony in it, but don’t start shopping until the cheque is in the bank.
Accusation is the easy exit route from Bhopal. Introspection will take us back to the beginning. Betrayal is impossible without trust. We did not trust Carbide to be honest. We trusted our political class, and it continues to search for new and inventive ways to betray us again.
The growing risk of a significant radiation leak at two Japanese nuclear power plants following yesterday’s earthquake and tsunami threatens to hurt an industry that has enjoyed a rebirth since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Yesterday, nuclear power advocates and environmentalists staked out familiar ground over the incident. But a wider public debate may be ignited if a major radiation leak occurs in Japan, said Paul Patterson, an energy analyst with consultants Glenrock Associates in New York.
That debate has been largely muted since the 1980s when rock concerts were held to galvanise opposition to nuclear power after the Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania and the popular movie “The China Syndrome,” that raised awareness of the dangers of a nuclear reactor meltdown.
“The severity of what happens is what is important,” Patterson said of the impact of the Japanese incident.
If there is a substantial radioactive release, there could even be questions about whether it could travel on the Pacific jet stream to the US West Coast.
“It is serious and it could lead to a meltdown,” said Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “And what we’re seeing, barring any information from the Japanese that they have it under control, is that we’re headed in that direction.”
But Naoto Sekimura of the University of Tokyo, said that a major radioactive disaster was not likely.
An 8.9-magnitude earthquake centered in northern Japan triggered a series of events at two Tokyo Electric Power Co plants that created conditions for a radioactive leak because there wasn’t electric power to circulate cooling water over superheated uranium fuel rods.
The two TEPCO plants, the Daiichi plant and the Daini plant are around 60km from the epicenter of the earthquake that led to a tsunami and probably killed more than 1,000.
Nuclear industry advocates yesterday were saying that the ability of the nuclear reactors in Japan to largely withstand the power of the earthquake shows how safe nuclear power is.
But that was before a series of scary announcements from TEPCO that it had lost the ability to control pressure at several reactors and that it was having trouble with a valve that would allow reactor pressure to be eased.
Thousands of residents were evacuated from the immediate area of the Fukushima plants, about 240km north of Tokyo.
Industry experts said the precautions taken at Fukushima showed that enhanced security at nuclear power plants should prevent any disaster. But green groups said the threatened leak showed that the risks were still too high.
“I wouldn’t expect there to be a radiation emergency ultimately, they may have something to fix but it’s a precaution more than anything else,” said Sue Ion, former chief technology officer at British Nuclear Fuels, after Japan declared an atomic power emergency.
Altogether, some 11 Japanese reactors shut down after the earthquake.
Successive layers of security should prevent any leak of radiation, said Jeremy Gordon, an analyst at the World Nuclear Association based in London.
NUCLEAR POWER GAINS RECENTLY
“The reactor designs that are up for consideration today are generation three where the safety systems operate at an even higher level,” said WNA analyst Jonathan Cobb.
But environmental groups said the threat of a radiation leak underscored the general risks from atomic energy.
“We’ve opposed nuclear power for decades, and this is another proof that it can’t be safe,” said Sven Teske, director of renewable energy at Greenpeace International.
A leading US scientist group said the incident highlighted the grave risk of inadequate back-up power to cooling systems at US facilities.
New interest from governments and investors in nuclear power follows the development of more advanced plants, and a new focus on security of energy supply and moves to reduce carbon emissions. Nuclear plants generate low-carbon power in contrast to fossil fuels and can produce constantly unlike wind and some other clean energy sources.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated last month that about 10 countries have decided to introduce nuclear power and started preparatory infrastructure work, up from four in 2008. — Reuters
Japan scrambled today to reduce pressure in two nuclear plants damaged after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck its northeast coast probably killing at least 1,300 people.
A day after the biggest quake on record in Japan, the government said it was still too early to grasp the full extent of damage or casualties. The confirmed death toll so far is almost 300, though media reports say it is at least 1,300.
“Unfortunately, we must be prepared for the number to rise greatly,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.
The tremor, with a magnitude of 8.9, was so huge that thousands fled their homes from coastlines around the Pacific Rim, as far away as North and South America, fearful of a tsunami.
Most appeared to have been spared anything more serious than some high waves, unlike Japan’s northeast coastline which was hammered by a 10-metre high tsunami that turned houses and ships into floating debris as it surged into cities and villages, sweeping aside everything in its path.
“I thought I was going to die,” said Wataru Fujimura, a 38-year-old sales representative in Koriyama, Fukushima, north of Tokyo and close to area worst hit by the quake.
“Our furniture and shelves had all fallen over and there were cracks in the apartment building, so we spent the whole night in the car... Now we’re back home trying to clean everything up.”
The government warned of a possible radiation leak as authorities began trying to reduce pressure at damaged two nuclear plants, sending tens of thousands of residents out of the area to avoid possible contamination.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said it had begun steps to release pressure at its two nuclear power plants in Fukushima, some 240km north of Tokyo.
But Kyodo news agency quoted the company as saying it was having difficulties opening a valve at its Daiichi reactor to release pressure.
Experts and the government both insisted there would be no radioactive disaster.
“No Chernobyl is possible at a light water reactor. Loss of coolant means a temperature rise, but it also will stop the reaction,” Naoto Sekimura, a professor at the University of Tokyo, said.
“Even in the worst-case scenario, that would mean some radioactive leakage and equipment damage, but not an explosion.
If venting is done carefully, there will be little leakage.
Certainly not beyond the 3km radius.”
The unfolding natural disaster, which has been followed by dozens of aftershocks, prompted offers of search and rescue help from 50 countries.
In one of the worst-hit residential areas, people buried under rubble could be heard calling out for rescue, Kyodo news agency reported. TV footage showed staff at one hospital waving
banners with the words “FOOD” and “HELP” from a rooftop.
In Tokyo, tens of thousands of office workers were stranded overnight after the quake shut down public transport. Many were forced to bed down where they could, with newspapers to lie on
and briefcases for pillows.
Kyodo said at least 116,000 people in Tokyo had been unable to return home yesterday evening due to transport disruption.
The northeastern Japanese city of Kesennuma, with a population of 74,000, was hit by widespread fires and one-third of the city was under water, Jiji news agency said today.
The airport in the coastal city of Sendai, home to one million people, was on fire, it added.
“Sendai (city) is now completely sunk underwater,” said limousine driver Yoshikatsu Takayabe, 52. “What do I want the government to do? I can’t flush the toilet, I want the water back on in my house.”
TV footage from yesterday showed a black torrent of water carrying cars and wrecked homes at high speed across farmland near Sendai, 300km northeast of Tokyo. Ships had been flung onto a harbour wharf, where they lay helplessly.
Kyodo news agency reported that contact had been lost with four trains in the coastal area.
The disaster poses a huge challenge for Kan’s government which has come under such concerted attack from the opposition and within the ruling Democratic Party (DJP) that it has struggled to implement any policy.
Just hours before the quake struck, Kan was rejecting demands that he resign, his political future looking increasingly bleak and unable even to muster enough support to ensure the passage of bills needed to enact the new budget.
But after the tremor, politicians pushed for an emergency budget to fund relief efforts, with Kan urging them to “save the country”, Kyodo reported.
Japan is already the most heavily indebted major economy in the world, meaning any additional borrowing by the government would be closely scrutinised by financial markets.
MANY FIRES
The quake, the most powerful since Japan started keeping records 140 years ago, sparked at least 80 fires in cities and towns along the coast, Kyodo said.
“When I felt the quake yesterday, I actually thought it was a strong wind slamming the door,” said Emiko Nakahara, 61.
“But then my husband said no, it’s a quake. I was frightened like I’ve never been before.”
Other nuclear power plants and oil refineries were shut down and one refinery was ablaze. Power to millions of homes and businesses was knocked out. Several airports, including Tokyo’s
Narita, were closed yesterday and rail services halted. All ports were shut.
Nuclear power plant operator Tepco warned of severe power shortages over the weekend.
The central bank said it would cut short a two-day policy review scheduled for next week to one day on Monday and promised to do its utmost to ensure financial market stability.
The disaster struck as the world’s third-largest economy had been showing signs of reviving from an economic contraction in the final quarter of last year. It raised the prospect of major disruptions for many key businesses and a massive repair bill running into tens of billions of dollars.
The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world
in the past century. It surpassed the Great Kanto quake of Sept.
1, 1923, which had a magnitude of 7.9 and killed more than 140,000 people in the Tokyo area.
The 1995 Kobe quake caused US$100 billion (RM303 billion) in damage and was the most expensive natural disaster in history. — Reuters
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