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Mafia Sinks Ships Containing Toxic Waste
Hugh Pickens writes "For years there have been rumors that the mafia was sinking ships with nuclear and other waste on board as part of a money-making racket. Now, BBC reports on a sunken vessel that has been found 30km off the coast of Italy. Murky pictures taken by a robot camera show the vessel intact, and alongside it are a number of yellow barrels with labels indicating the contents are toxic. The ship's location was revealed by Francesco Fonti, an ex-member of Calabria's feared 'Ndrangheta crime group, who confessed to using explosives to sink this vessel and two others as part of an illegal operation to bypass rules on the disposal of toxic waste. Experts are now examining samples taken from the wreck, and an official says that if the samples prove to be radioactive then a search for up to 30 other sunken vessels believed scuttled by the mafia would begin immediately. 'The Mediterranean is 0.7 percent of the world's seas. If in this tiny portion there are more than 30 (toxic waste) shipwrecks, imagine what there could be elsewhere,' says Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria's environment agency."
Fuck. Me. I sometimes wonder what it must be like to be a person with no moral fibre at all. I can't imagine it, must be weird.
"If it makes me $1000, I'll do it. That it will harm 10.000.000 people, it doesn't matter".
That said, nuclear waste is not necessarily the most dangerous imaginable. Believe it or not, the humble dioxines can be more dangerous. If for no other reason, because they accumulate in the body without ever leaving it (except for liposuction).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If the government didn't want them to dump this waste out at sea, they would ease the restrictions on the disposal of toxic waste. Once again we witness how government regulation results in MORE pollution rather than less.
I don't have a hard time imagining crooked corporations paying to have their chemical waste disposed under the table like this, but who has nuclear waste that would do this? At least here in the US I can't see a power plant getting away with this - they have to keep close account of their material and it is audited pretty closely as well. That would leave mostly medical and scientific sources. I suppose they don't dispose of that directly so the company they paid to take care of it must be crooked.
The people that made this decision deserve to fry. Too bad it is impossible to create a justice system that I would actually trust to make those sort of decisions.
Yes, because obviously the Italian Mafia in ITALY has to have permission from the EPA, in the U.S.A., to do anything.
Don't you have to have some kind of license from the EPA to dispose of toxic waste? Did the producers of the waste not verify the license? There are not that many places to dispose of toxic waste. I am sure it was more than just the guys in the mafia who were in on this. I think the producers of the waste should be responsible for the clean up.
Well... First of all I don't think the EPA has jurisdiction over Italy.
Second, they're the Mafia, I don't think they worry all that much about legality.
Third, I kind of thought that the whole reason this was a story was because it was illegal.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
i hope they soon realize the next time they order fish in a restaurant that the fish comes from the same ocean that they sunk those ships, all that water circulates so pollution one part of the ocean gets around to the rest...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The Mediterranean is 0.7 percent of the world's seas. If in this tiny portion there are more than 30 (toxic waste) shipwrecks, imagine what there could be elsewhere,' says Silvestro Greco, head of Calabria's environment agency.
Isn't that like saying "OMG, this chainsaw massacre crime scene is just .00000000000000000001% of the earth's surface, so if there's 5 dismembered bodies here just imagine how many more there could be elsewhere?! You should totally give my Agency more money."
Well, it all depends on money. If it costs me $10 per pound to extract the mercury, and I can sell it for $20 per pound, you can bet your ass I'd do it. But if I can only get $2 per pound selling it, I'd rather spend $1 per pound dumping it.
This is something I think about all the time.
It could be argued that we are all immoral, because we are not interested in the consequences of our actions. The mafia crook dynamiting the ship with toxic waste isn't much different from an "waste resources" executive who bargains to send toxic waste to countries who need the money. One is exalted, one reviled, yet they both basically do the same thing. The executive simply pretends that the waste is properly disposed of in another country. The mafia crook doesn't kid himself. He knows the truth, and accepts it.
Which person is more immoral? Where does accountability figure into the equation? And where in a capitalist equation do you enter the morality quotient? Who enforces it?
These questions are simply not asked, because no one really wants the answer. For me, voluntary ignorance is immoral, and represents one of the great evils in the world today.
Both exhibit hugely damaging behavior; but there are structural differences worth noting.
In broad strokes, organized crime exploits the niches created by legal prohibitions, while corporations exploit the niches created by legal allowances.
Bootlegging, drug running, cigarette smuggling, and illicit waste disposal are all activities that are profitable because they are either illegal, and thus have no legitimate competitors, or have legitimate competitors that operate under considerable restrictions or high taxes. In order to exploit these niches, mafias put resources into stealth and subversion of the law enforcement apparatus(bribing cops, planting informants, intimidating witnesses, etc.). They don't tend to try to alter the law(indeed, the law creates their profitable niche); but simply to evade, subvert, or blunt its enforcement on them.
Corporate activities tend to focus much more on subverting the law, rather than subverting the law enforcement. Lobbying for softball legislation(in particular, if an industry supports federal regulation of something, that probably means that some state's law pisses them off, and they want it preempted), exploiting loopholes(spinning off shell subsidiaries as owners of all your severely polluted sites, say), moving from country to country to find the most favorable regulatory conditions, buying supreme court justices, and the like; are all about exploiting, and where possible modifying, the structure of the law.
The two aren't completely distinct, obviously, and both use a mix of tactics(not a few corporations have used outright violence from time to time, and most mafias have substantial interests in legal areas of business); but there behaviors are hardly identical, even if the results sometimes are.
So if you go to the middle east there are regularly news reports about how the west (possibly with some specifics), are dumping toxic/radioactive waste off the coast of Somalia/Egypt/Iraq/Pakistan/other muslim country with a coast. And we - in the west- tend to regard these as nonsense. But now we're finding out that we are getting toxic waste dumped off the coast of western countries - that seems like it might be tip of the iceberg. Somalia isn't nearly as likely as italy to catch these things (albeit rather slowly), who knows what we could find in the deep waters off countries that don't have the ability to patrol their own coasts.
Just a fine? Sounds to me as though the ship(s) should have been forfeited and sold at auction.
Actually, the Board of Directors should have been sold at auction.
I'm sure Italy would be delighted if you could provide them an example of any country that has been able to clean out its own local mob so they could copy their methods. Do you know one?
Why would a corporation do it themselves, when they can pay a "contractor" to do it for them? Where do you think all this toxic waste came from in the first place? That's right, corporations who contracted out disposal to the lowest cost bidder, then adopted a "I see nothing!" attitude to how it was actually disposed of.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This doesn't justify piracy, but it does give lie to the notion that they lack a legitimate grievance and are simply out for money, and it helps to explain why they enjoy such support from Somalians.
Well, it means they had a grievance that lead them away from fishing. But once the crazy piracy $$ started rolling in (many times more than they ever made in the best of times fishing), it became all about the money.
The enemies of Democracy are
But once the crazy piracy $$ started rolling in (many times more than they ever made in the best of times fishing),
Really? Is that money more than the cost of all the illnesses and deaths [1] wrought by the toxic dumping, plus the present-discounted value of future fish and sea resources? If not, they haven't been made whole after what's been done to them.
Again, I want to make absolutely clear that I don't think piracy is the right response. They should have sent clan representatives to international bodies (UN, Arab League, EU, international sea organizations, etc.) to ask for respect for their coastal right before any large-scale violence.
But just the same, the poor motives of many of the pirates doesn't detract from their cause. If you believed a certain war was justified, would you change your opinion on learning that most soldiers fighting in it were just there for the soldier's pay and benefits?
[1]dangit, that nasty issue of "value of a human life" pops up again!
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Let me tell you a little ugly truth about about docks, dock workers unions and the mafia...