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Dow vs. Parody
tres3 writes "I stumbled across this item on Wired about Verio cutting off The Thing's Internet access after seven years of service. It seems that The Yes Men have upset DOW Chemical with their parody press release concerning a poison gas leak at the Union Carbide plant (now owned by Dow) in Bhopal, India, in 1984, that killed thousands. It was posted by RTMark.com, one of hundreds of customers (mostly artists and political activists) of The Thing, but has gone missing following the DMCA claims by DOW. Some European sites are now hosting the site here and here (slightly different). What really sent me into orbit was Dow's response to all of this. While writing this submission I noticed that I have become a victim of The Yes Men and "Dow's" response is actually one of their parodies! :-) The story is still valid but the only thing I could find that really came from DOW was the DMCA complaint (pdf) to Verio. To add insult to injury (and death (pun intended)) Dow has committed a reprehensible act, even for corporate America, by suing the survivors for ten years of income ($10,000) for protesting Dow's failure to clean up the mess. Greenpeace has set up a site for you to protest this action." We did an earlier story on this.
The entire point of the Yes Man's actions has always been that it is confused with the real thing. They've done a couple things that make you really think about it, and they could only do it the way they did.
If corporations have free speech, why can't the Yes Men? Honestly, what's the worse crime - poisoning a couple thousand people, or impersonating someone who isn't even a person?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
basically this whole story is a troll and people will be falling for it for the next 24 hours or so.
good times.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
The news that Dow is suing the Bopahl survivors to try to silence their protests over Dows failure to clean up is news to me.
The Union Carbide disaster at Bopahl was due to sheer negligence and greed. Dow still refuses to clean up the site of the disaster and has yet to pay compensation to most of the victims.
Perhaps if students stopped and considered the wisdom of joining a company that could kill 800 people with its negligence and not care a damn Dow might have a lot more difficulty recruiting on campus.
If you are choosing an employer in the chemical business their safety record should be your first concern. If you work for a company like Dow that is saying that they can kill 800 people, create pollution that will kill even more and they just don't care you are quite litteraly putting your own life on the line for their corporate profits.
The same goes for communities that have Dow installations near them, or planned to be built near them. Make sure that your representatives are aware that Dow cannoit be trusted.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
...that bit about DOW suing the families that were destroyed/hurt by their Bhopal disaster?
A bunch of women marched on DOW HQ in India, delivering some of the contanimated soil and water from Bhopal. The protest lasted two peaceful hours. A single DOW employee greeted them.
DOW is now suing them for the equivalent of US$10K -- a helluva lot of money, particularly in India -- for "lost wages" because of the "work disruption."
Disgusting. First they slaughter hundreds and thousands of employees and families through cost-cutting, undertraining, and poor plant maintenance; then they refuse to clean up the mess; then they sue the very people who were hurt by the accident.
Sometimes it would be e'er so nice to be able to punish CEOs as if they'd committed the crimes themselves.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Far be it from me to think walking away from an ecological disaster is a good thing, but from what I can see, according to both the US and Indian courts, Dow has done everything they said they'd do relating to this, and everything the lawsuits against them said they had to do.
The paid ~$500 million to the Indian Government for ongoing cleanup, to create a medical program for anyone who lives in the affected area, and to cover things like ongoing monitoring of the chemical creep. They also paid out an additional ~$20 million to build and maintain a new hospital specifically in the area to handle any related medical claims. They also added an additional ~$55 million dollars to the hospital support funds when they bought out UCI.
They actually have paid out far more than the lawsuits against them in US courts originally stated (where the Indian government received a ruling for ~$350 million). I think all told that Dow has produced over $600 million for cleanup and ongoing support and healthcare.
All in all, most of the cleanup, treatment and monitoring of chemical contamination in the area is supposed to be handled by the Indian Government, not by Dow directly. If those hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent somewhere else, are people asking the government (or whoever they've appointed to handle the situation) where it's going?
This is especially apt as many of the court cases have focused on Dow's liability, and the majority still uphold the 'reasonable doubt' that Dow was criminally liable (which is why they still haven't tried very hard to get Warren Anderson shipped their for homicide charges), and even some went so far as to support the findings of 3rd party teams that the chemical release was a result of a deliberate act by a disgruntled worker.
Now, it's been 18 years, and I don't personally have any knowledge of anything to do with Bhopal beyond what I can read. However, based on that information, I think a lot of this is the result of PR by Greenpeace and others who conveniently ignore the things that Dow *has* done.
As an aside, I don't work for Dow, have any relatives who work for Dow, or own stock in Dow (unless one of those pathetic 401k funds that are basically WORTHLESS right now has shares, in which case I don't give a damn). I just see a lot of knee-jerk reactions and wonder if a lot of people who 'know about bhopal' have ever done more than read 1 website or less? Could Dow be a tool of Satan designed to make life on Earth a living hell, run completely by unfeeling demons who want to kill and maim innocent people? Sure. Is it probably that black-and-white? I really doubt it. It's only fair to research both sides.
Um, no. The above quotations are from DOW Ethics.com, which is obviously one of the parody sites.
I say obviously, because I do not for one hot second think that anyone here can or should defend DOW Chemical in this matter. Yes, The Onion is an obvious parody, but not because of the disclaimers or the site design, but because of the content. And don't pull out your tired and elitist "Joe Average" arguments, because Joe Average is probably not surfing the DOW chemical websites anyway. Those sites are for investors and business types and if they aren't smart enough to tell when they are being had, well, fuck 'em.
These are very strange times we live in today, and strange times call for strange measures. Yes, the parody people took some extreme steps (ripping off corporate design, registering similar domain names) but that's what it might take to get attention. And it certainly did get some attention, now didn't it? How many of you would even be thinking about the policies and procedures of DOW chemicals today if it weren't for this story? Probably three of you. Certainly not me, I'm nursing a headache from lack of sleep.
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To be defamation, or more precisely, libel Dow would have to show false facts. What are the false facts that have been published?
Second it is not false representation. Parody by nature requires one to create an image of what you are making parody of. To be fraud, they must be attempting to get something of value.
Asking a court to restrict someone's right or penalize someone for their speech is an infringment of the first amendment. Using the threat os this should also be considered the same.
Fight Spammers!
Whether this was parody or fraud should have been a matter for the courts to decide. Thanks to the provisions of the DMCA, they didn't have to get involved for censorship to occur. This is what is meant by the term, "Chilling Effect." As for defamation, printing negative information is not libel if it is true, no matter how negative. A biting satire of the company that continues to ignore their responsibility for Bhopal, and is even suing Bhopal survivors, that appears at first glance to be Dow's real website is a valid exercise in free speech in my opinion. I think that the Supreme Court would eventually agree if they heard this case, as it did in the Larry Flynt vs. Jerry Falwell case. Dow deserves to have the screws put to them. I support the Yes Men, and Greenpeace for doing just that. Dow could have avoided a lot of negative publicity by ignoring the yes men. Now, more people than ever before are learning that Dow is Union Carbide, and people are still dying every day because of their irresponsibility.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
American politicians today who scream about Iraq gassing its own people should take a look at this.
A negligent American company releases poisonous gases in a third-world country and kills or injures tens of thousands of (dark-skinned) people. You would think the world would be outraged.
Your comparison between Carbide and Hussein is morally bankrupt.
There is a very large difference between the negligence (if there was actual negligence) of Carbide and murderous intent of Saddam Hussein to commit genocide. Carbide certainly did NOT go out and say 'let's kill off a bunch of folks using MIC to cut down on these local protests'.
There is also the fact that the UCarbide plant in West Va, had problems with MIC accidents as well. The concept that Carbide was doing anything in India because it felt that Indians were less worthy than Americans is speculative, to say the least.
UC does bear a great deal of responsibility for what happened in India. But it was not genocide, murder, chemical warefare or any other such act. It was an unintended industrial accident of unprecidented impact.
Maybe UC was negligent in it's operations of the Bhopal plant - but the fact is that best practice standards then and now are two very different things. And the fact is that ultimately that local management of a chemical plant is in the best position to address safety issues. That local management must share a great deal of the responsibility for what happened, including ultimately the leaky valve that was the immediate cause of the accident. That local management was Indian.