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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.
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.
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."
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.
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.