Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property:

WHOEVER cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or anything which is signed or sealed, and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.

-Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860

Dishonesty hit the atmosphere:

THE irony of a cover story on climate change is too unsubtle to miss in this 420th issue of the magazine. A fraudulent attempt to sabotage a 15-year multilateral process has brought into the debate even those who never discuss it because climate change politics is immediate enough and dirty enough to compete with any other cloak-and-dagger political intrigue story.

It has been obvious from the beginning the rich countries do not want to pay for what they need to do. They agreed to common but differentiated responsibilities under a moral obligation, but now, there is no fig leaf. They openly run down the idea of equal entitlements to the atmosphere.

They do not even blush before disowning responsibility for the historical emission that caused the climate to change. They do not want to offer financial and technological help to poorer countries to achieve growth without carbon emission. What they are on the lookout for is opportunity to fish in dirty water, make money out of climate change. More obvious fraudulent behaviour is not easy to identify.

But it is the environment minister’s letter to the prime minister that has been the talk of the town. It suggested an about-turn in India’s position to align it with climate criminals of the world. It cannot be ignored as an innocent effort of a dealmaker.

Fraudulent behaviour has always marked climate negotiations. Trusting the market to tackle climate change is itself dishonesty how can a problem get solved by the tools of an economic system that created it in the first place?

Aubergine with the new gene

THERE are valid concerns that the poor farmers of India four-fifths are small and marginal should not be left to the vicissitudes of the market. Countries that promote the private sector in agriculture can do so because they have millions of dollars of subsidies to protect their farmers. The Indian government, though, wants the farmer to live off the private sector without any real support. Genetically modified crops are driven entirely by the private sectors profit motive.

The big fraud in India’s GM story, though, is on the consumer. The government has never had a public debate on whether we need GM food. It is controversial across the world, and the precautionary principle the bedrock of health and environmental regulations demands it not be allowed till all reasonable doubts have been allayed. Without labeling, the consumer cannot make an informed choice. Regulators say they know all they need to know and the consumer should trust them.

India’s regulators of genetically modified crops have been viewed with suspicion for their proximity to industry. They occupy an office that requires they defend the trust Indians place in the government. That trust requires the reasons for their decisions are public, unambiguous and in line with their mandate. Instead, the regulatory system works under industry’s influence. This is defrauding public trust.

The name of the toxic game:

A SHIP awaiting breaking at the Alang yard in Gujarat has a murky past. Activists have shown the ships owners changed its name to dodge US regulations that prevent sending toxic materials, including ships, to other countries for recycling. The Basel Convention, an international treaty, bars rich countries from dumping their toxic wastes on poor countries.

The fraud here is not limited to the owners registering the ship under a new name. The shipbreaking yards owners, who compromise health and safety of workers, are equally fraudulent.

Source: Down to Earth. 15 November 2009

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/2708

Fears over sub scrapyard decision:

Eight disused submarines are already being stored at Devonport 

An anti-nuclear campaigner has raised concerns officials have already decided Plymouth should be a scrapyard for decommissioned nuclear submarines.

Ian Avent, who sits on the Submarine Dismantling Project (SDP) consultation advisory group, said he feared it was a "done deal" for Devonport Dockyard.

His concerns come after the SDP panel, which is to recommend how to dispose of submarines, lost two members.

The government said that no decision had been taken yet.

The UK currently has a fleet of 27 nuclear submarines.

Eight disused vessels are being stored at Devonport, ahead of being dismantled, while seven are at Rosyth, in Fife.

The SDP panel has to decide how to deal with the radioactive and non-radioactive hazardous wastes from the submarines in the short and long-term.

However, earlier this week, government adviser Peter Lanyon resigned from it in protest at the sacking of his colleague, Dr Jane Hunt.

Mr Lanyon said his position was no longer tenable as his views and those of his dismissed colleague were not being considered.

Mr Avent, who is on the SDP panel and is a member of the local pressure group CANSAR (the Campaign Against Nuclear Storage And Radiation), said he was concerned Dr Hunt was sacked because the government was given advice it did not want to hear.

He said: "I'm frightened that it's a done deal. I'm frightened that the consultation might be just window dressing.

"If that's the case, what are we left with? We're left with our councillors and our MPs to defend us."

The government said that it did listen to scientists' advice.

Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who was at the Met Office in Exeter on Friday, said: "We do listen to scientists, including on that issue.

"In the end, government has to make its decisions on the basis of the best scientific evidence available to it.

"We should be by guided by the science and that is the approach that we'll take."

Source: BBC. 6 November 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8347819.stm

Ship Bound for Breaking Finds New Career:

The Margaret Hill, a 50,700 tonne liquid natural gas tanker, was stopped from leaving the UK’s Southampton docks in August this year. The Environment Agency took swift action after it received intelligence that the ship was bound for dismantling on the Indian subcontinent, where ships are routinely broken up on beaches in conditions which put workers and the environment at risk. Due to its age, the Margaret Hill is likely to contain hazardous materials such as asbestos.

MARGARET HILL - IMO 7368841

Description: 74 / 71,804gt / 50,746dwt (MHL) [lpg] [c/s : V7HK5]

Category: LNG Tanker

Waste ships containing hazardous materials can only be dismantled at properly authorised dismantling facilities in either the EU or an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country.

Since detaining the ship in August the Environment Agency has worked with Fortress Credit Co LLC which became the mortgagee in possession of the Margaret Hill – to find a suitable legal alternative. All parties to the sale and refurbishment have provided the necessary contracts and evidence to demonstrate there are no reasonable grounds to detain the vessel any longer.

The ship is now destined to be refurbished in Dubai before being put back to use as a floating treatment plant for liquid natural gas. It is due to sail to Dubai from Southampton docks as soon as practicable.

Source: Marine Link. 5 November 2009 

http://www.marinelink.com/news/article/ship-bound-for-breaking-finds-new-career/332402.aspx

Crimes of The Corporatocracy:

Maybe it all started back in 1772, when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe first began to work on the tragedy of Faust, the supposedly brilliant scholar who sold his soul to the devil for a chance to relive his youth. Even if one considers the modern equivalent -- "I made him an offer he couldn't refuse" -- there is little doubt that, in games of power, one party plans to dominate another by hook or by crook.

In his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, filmmaker Michael Moore doesn't hesitate to describe capitalism as inherently evil. As he interviews Americans whose lives have been ruined by predatory lending, foreclosures, or simply being powerless pawns in the banking industry's multinational gambling schemes, audiences see human faces put on the victims of globalization.

While microcredit programs like Kiva have helped many to break out of poverty and become successful entrepreneurs, appealing to people's baser instincts by tempting them with mortgages they can't afford, credit default swaps, or "irrationally exuberant" lines of credit, is an easy way to trap consumers in a spiral of debt. Watch carefully as John Hodgeman schools Jon Stewart in the ways of Wall Street.

Whether one chooses to think in terms of macroeconomics or microeconomics, the use of debt as a financial weapon is becoming clearer in terms of how we perceive the global economy. Whereas 2003's The Corporation did a superb job of showing the ruthlessness with which corporate interests are willing to destroy lives in their pursuit of profits, two new documentaries do a superb job of showing how financial power is used to put the squeeze on impoverished workers as well as political leaders.

Soon to be screened at the Seventh Annual 3rd I San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival is a documentary of deceptive visual beauty. I was particularly interested in seeing Iron Eaters because India and Bangladesh have become the final destinations for so many ocean liners and old ships whose final voyages deliver them into the hands of the ship breakers who sell their steel for scrap.

Shaheen Dill-Riaz

It is to writer/director Shaheen Rill-Diaz's great credit that his film not only exposes the brutal effects of capitalism on some of Bangladesh's poorest workers but that, despite exposing such financial exploitation, so much of his footage is a gorgeous visual treat.

The beaches of Chittagong in the Bay of Bengal are where many container ships and oil tankers are broken down by Bangladeshi iron workers who have been forced from their homelands in the north during seasonal floods. Their work requires them to wade through mud that reaches as high as their calves as they pull the heavy cables that will drag the ships closer to the beach. 

Often working under conditions that would make an OSHA inspector vomit with disgust, they are sometimes required to carry iron plate on their shoulders when it is still hot from the application of blow torches. Known as the Lohakhor (iron eaters), the men work long, unforgiving hours from which some never recover.

Kholil and Gadu are two peasants from northern Bangladesh who recruit many of their relatives to work for Chittagong's PHP (Peace, Happiness, and Prosperity) Group when the flooding from the rainy season causes famine in the north. Although they are lured to Chittagong with advance payments and promises of easy loans, by the time they leave, they may not even have enough money for the trip home. Shaheen Dill-Riaz lived with the workers for  5 months in 2005 while filming them at work.

As he explains:

"I've known the place where the ships are dismantled since I was a child. It's not far from my home village. We had heard lots of stories about the huge ships and the serious industrial accidents, but those of us on the outside knew next to nothing about the real working conditions in the yards because the workers themselves never talked about what they experienced there. I wanted to know who these people are, who come to us in the south and work for months on starvation wages.

Getting shooting permission was hard enough. The most important point I had to get across to those in charge was that I was not making a film about environmental pollution (that was their biggest worry). While we were filming, we were faced with the same problems the workers themselves had. At the end of the day, we were observing extremely difficult, and even life-threatening working conditions. We stood barefoot with the workers in the mud, balanced on rotting beams, and went down into the extremely dangerous innards of the ships. I still can't understand to this day why nothing happened to us. Were we really so careful? Or were we just simply lucky."

Instead of forcing workers into debt, those responsible should admit that there is something essentially wrong here. Anyone who has seen these people at work knows that they are paid far too little and that the dangers they face every day could easily be avoided. There are technical solutions that could reduce the life-threatening risks the workers are exposed to -- and there are enough experts who have already approached the yard owners with suggestions for improvement, but these are continually ignored.

We have all obviously resigned ourselves to the fact that our lives are determined by the stock exchanges. So we shouldn't be surprised by the results. For me, Ironeaters shows the consequences of this global attitude.

With this film I wanted to immerse myself in a world which had been closed to me for a very long time. I was curious and I had expected to discover something new. The unbelievable working conditions that the film shows were not the greatest surprise for me but rather the administrative structure, which drives the people into a deadly debt trap. Even more appalling for me was the realization that the attitude of the exploitative system is founded on the basic elements of the economic system in which we all live. Ironeaters shows just how far this can go."

Desperate to earn money with which to support their families between rice harvests, these men work for a pittance. Because they are forced to purchase their food from grocery stores that cooperating with the shipyard owners (who happily extend their workers' credit to a point where the laborers are performing backbreaking work for almost no income), these men become trapped in a stifling debt spiral.

Don't be fooled by some of the arresting images or moments of exquisite cinematography. Despite the protests of the shipbreaker's management (who are noticeably well fed and are never seen doing any physical labor), this depiction of capitalism at work is not the slightest bit pretty.

Source: My Cultural Landscape. By George Heymont. 31 October 2009

http://myculturallandscape.blogspot.com/2009/10/crimes-of-corporatocracy.html

Convenient Airbrushing of a Ghost from the Ghost Fleet:

Eco-warriors claim success in getting the Suisun Bay fleet cleaned up, but the Higgins seems to have vanished

MARAD proudly declared this week that at least 25 ships of the Suisun Bay reserve fleet, popularly known as the ghost fleet, will be cleaned up in a San Francisco yard and then towed to Brownsville to be broken up. Two cargo ships – subject to different environmental regulations from naval vessels under the military's control – will be the first to go to the scrap yard.

USGS aerial photo montage of "nests" of anchored USNR ships at the National Defense Reserve Fleet in Suisun Bay, California. Source:NASA world wind

Huge cheers went up from the environmental community and everyone patted themselves on the back. "This is definitely big," Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, has been quoted as saying. "This is the start."

Others in the crowd are saying "Not so fast" and are asking: "Excuse me, but what about the Andrew Higgins?" Its name and fate have been airbrushed from public discussion as though it never existed.

Bruce Wolfe was completely in the dark about the ship when I asked him the same question a few weeks ago in another guise.

As it turns out, the Higgins is ceasing to exist, as you read these words. The ship was towed out of San Francisco Bay about three weeks ago, with no clean up or removal of toxic paints or waste, and taken straight to Galveston before starting life under a new name with Chile's navy.

Just why there has been no mention of the vessel or its fate is something of a mystery. But, industry insiders are speculating that the feds' sudden new desire to go public about the fleet is partly due to a mix of commercial and political motives – good scrap metal contracts have been signed and politically sensitive buyers are being avoided.

The Obama administration would probably have been only too pleased to cancel the Chile deal, but a contract is a contract and nothing could be done without risking litigation and public disclosure of negotiations that are best kept quiet.

Sadly, maritime news seems to be slipping into the same habit of being selective with its facts as the corporate financial and commercial sectors.

At Charleston, Maersk has changed its mind about pulling out and is using a dedicated space in a smaller terminal. Originally, it wanted to leave because the union refused to countenance the use of a non-union terminal – and the new arrangement is clearly a compromise because less union labor will be employed.

Maersk has been fulsome in praising a whole slew of politicians and regional officials but left out any mention of the trade union. The industry was itching for some reference, however brief and bald, to the union – which would have left no one in any doubt about the real situation.

Nostalgia for the past, when blunt speaking was the norm and prevented misunderstanding, is seen as being replaced by the needs of public relations.

Source: Maritime Professional. By Martin Rushmere. 26 October 2009

http://www.maritimeprofessional.com/Blogs/Martin-Rushmere/October-2009/Convenient-Airbrushing-of-a-Ghost-from-the-Ghost-F.aspx