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Mrs
Lillian Anderson, caught by Channel 4's reporter as she drove her silver
Cadillac into the couple's $1,150,000 home -which stands on a white sand
beach on the Atlantic ocrean - did not want to talk. She said huffily,
"My husband flew to India and they put him in jail". In fact,
Warren Anderson spent three hours under nominal 'house arrest' at Carbide's
luxury guest house. He was freed on a surety of $1,500 and left for America,
promising "I will come back to India whenever the law requires it."
But when the law required it, he said he did
not recognise the court's jurisdiction. He never returned.
How
inconvenient of Bhopal's dead and injured -"We've got people coming
to dinner"
Did Warren Anderson
have anything to say about the 20,000 people who have died in Bhopal as
a result of Carbide's gas leak? He did not. Instead his wife testily told
Channel 4's reporter, Zoe Conway, "This is most inconvenient. We've
got people coming to dinner." Pressed to ask her husband to say what
his current feelings were on the continuing suffering of more than 130,000
people in Bhopal, Mrs Anderson snapped, "I told you, we are giving
a dinner party, and it isn't even catered"
These
comments were not shown on last week's broadcast - we learned
of them in a telephone call from a friend - they prompted us to
do a bit of finding out about the Andersons' lifestyle.
Long Island's
Hamptons are an expensive part of the world. Steven Spielberg has
a house there. "Meg Ryan was at Sunset Beach on Shelter Island
on Saturday night having dinner,' gushed a recent issue of New York
Metro magazine. "Helena Christensen is always there, Liv Tyler
is always there, and socialites like Lulu de Kwiatkowski always
turn up. The locals have nicknamed some of the customers the boat
people, because they all come over on their incredible boats, and
they leave $300 tips."
So what is a dinner party in the Hampton's
like? What sort of shopping might Mrs Anderson's Cadillac have been
carrying home?
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Bridgehampton Polo Club is just down the road
from the Andersons. Membership costs upwards
of $7,500 a year.
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Not
part of the real world.
"I have to tell you, we're not part of the real world,"
said Bridgehampton's society caterer Brent Newsom, when we put these
questions to him. "It costs to live here."
It would seem that Lillian Anderson
is used to having her dinner parties catered. A Newsom dinner for
eight people could easily cost over $1,000. At a recent seven-person
lunch attended by the Governor of New York, the food cost $800. There
were two staff at $350 and flowers at around $250.
The client generally provides
the wine, because New York licensing laws mean a caterer would have
to charge restaurant prices, say $100 for a bottle of wine that cost
$30 in the shops.
Perhaps Lillian had
been over to the Amagansett Wine Store, where they do a decent Latour
Pouilly Fuisse for $22 a bottle, and a Paumanok 2000 Sauvignon Blanc,
a local version of a Sauterne for a mere $80.
What would she be
cooking? Well, beef would be a usual choice for a smart dinner party,
but of course it's red meat. Although Warren appears fit for his age,
he has to take care of his health.
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Long
Island lobster will be off the menu. The lobsters have been poisoned,
probably by pesticides.
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Lobster,
in this area of stunning seascapes is a favourite food. It's delicious,
low in fats and not particularly high in cholesterol.
"I call ahead and
have Southampton's Clamman cook my lobsters," says local resident
Jamee Gregory, adding, "I don't like to hear them scream."
In Vero Beach, Florida,
where the Andersons have their other holiday home, P.V.Martin's
Oceanside restaurant, famous for its "champagne brunch"
does giant Florida lobster tails at $30, but in the exclusive Hamptons,
a local told us, "Places that serve lobster do not have the prices
on the menu." Eight
jumbo-sized lobsters for a dinner party would cost about $240. But
fishermen report a "widespread lobster die off". The suspected
cause: pesticides like those made by Union Carbide.
Many Long Islanders
are partial to tomalley, the pale green stuff found in the lobster's
body, but local Lobster Promotion Councils advise against eating it,
warning that as tomalley is the liver and pancrea, dioxins might have
entered the system from the environment. Ironically, the dioxins enter
the environment courtesy of Dow Chemical, which bought Warren's old
company, Union Carbide.
On second thoughts,
Warren and Lillian wouldn't eat those lobsters anyway. Pesticides
can do awful things to your health. |
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Organic produce, untouched by
herbicides and pesticides
Lillian can
find fruit and vegetables at the Scuttle Hole farm shop, just a
quick dash from her house up to the top of Ocean Road and a jink
across the Montauk Highway.
Brent Newsom thinks its worth going
further afield."If I want really good field-ripened tomatoes,
I go to to Round Swamp in East Hampton. They grow almost everything
they sell, and their corn is fabulous. It's fresh organic produce
untouched by herbicides or pesticides," Sounds wonderful. "But",
he admits, "it is très cher."
Très cher,
too, are the butchers, but of course the meat is simply the best.
"Dreesen's in East Hampton is good,
and the shop delivers - it's a fabulous if you don't mind paying
$18 for veal scallopini."
So, uncatered,
how much at minimum must Lillian Anderson's dinner party have cost?
Perhaps $40 on nibbles from somewhere
inexpensive like Gemelli's of Babylon - you wouldn't want to be
fussed with them yourself. $160 for the meat, because you want the
best, and another $40 for the très cher vegetables.
Four bottles of Latour Pouilly Fuisse, $88 and the Paumanok at $80.
Cheeses? "I can only
afford Sagaponack's Loaves & Fishes once a month," one
local complains. "It seems like it's $20 for a quarter-pound
of anything." $80. Dessert? Fresh fruit, enough for eight,
$40.
Flowers? $0 from the garden
- after all why else keep three gardeners? And the total is $528.
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A
world away from Lillian's $500 bash: Leela Bai's dinner party
in Bhopal.
In
her shack, lit by a single dim bulb, Leela Bai prepares dinner
for her family. She is the same age as Warren Anderson and like
him, has to watch her health. It'll be rice again tonight, the
same as last night, seasoned with a little salt. Rice costs 9¢
a pound in Bhopal.
There is nothing else in the
house. Occasionally there will be a some daal (lentils), and perhaps
some spinach (4¢
a pound). When hunger becomes unbearable, they
tie scarves tightly round their bellies to give the illusion of
fullness.
Leela
was one of those caught by Union Carbide's cloud of poison gas
nearly eighteen years ago. She recalls the terror of "that
night", waking with eyes and mouth burning, every breath
like inhaling acid. The panic in the narrow lanes, when people
were trampled. People choking and dropping dead, with bloody foam
bubbling from their lips.
Her
family of six survived, but ever since they have suffered from
breathlessness and spells of vomiting. One of her sons has gone
blind. All
six family members suffer from breathlessness and spells of vomiting.
Burdened by injury they cannot
earn well. The family's joint income is $30 a month.
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Monsoon
rains wash toxins from the factory into the groundwater. Drinking
wells are polluted by carcinogens and heavy metals, including
20,000 to 6 million times the expected levels of mercury.
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Organophosphates don't taste as nice as organics.
With
their meal, Leela and her family will be drinking not wine but water.
Mind you this is no ordinary water.
It's
Chateau Carbide, laced with chemicals leaching into the ground water
and wells from the toxins dumped by Carbide for years before and
after the gas leak. Piles of dangerous chemicals are still lying
in the abandoned factory. Each monsoon's rains washes them into
the soil and groundwater.
Greenpeace analaysed the drinking water
of communities like Leela's who live the near the factory. They
found chemicals capable of causing cancers, leukemia, damage to
vital organs and birth defects. People who drink the water report
symptoms like those who were gassed in the original disaster.
French writer Dominique Lapierre, whose book
Five Past Midnight in Bhopal demonstrates how Union Carbide's
neglect led inexorably to the disaster, drank a half glass of the
water and reported:
"My mouth, my throat, my tongue instantly
got on fire, while my arms and legs suffered an immediate skin rash.
This was the simple manifestation of what men, women and children
have to endure daily, eighteen years after the tragedy".
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Warren Anderson probably spent more in one night than his victims
got 'in compensation' for a lifetime of torture.
For
the gas victims of Bhopal every day of the past eighteen years has
been a struggle against breathlessness, nausea, brain damage, cancers,
fevers, numbness, panic attacks, menstrual chaos, monstrous births.
Yet of those who
have received any compensation, ninety percent got less than $500.
Leela got just $208. "No one
in my family received more than that", she told us. "The
money went on medicines as soon as it came to our hands."
Over eighteen years $208 works out
at just 3 cents a day and with each day that passes, its value dwindles.
- which is why the case must not be stalled any longer. The
survivors demand that Anderson and Union Carbide (now a wholly owned
subsidiary of Dow Chemicals) must no longer be allowed to obstruct
justice.
The poor and the hungry
of Bhopal live in the real world. Mr Anderson does not
Last week, he was annoyed when Bhopal
came knocking at his door in the idyllic Hamptons and held up his
smart dinner party. How ironic is that from a man who has been holding
up justice for thousands of poor, sick and hungry people for eleven
years?
Three days ago the Indian Government finally
announced that it will seek Warren Anderson's extradition from the
US.
He and his wife must have been hoping
Bhopal had gone away. But Bhopal will never go away. Not until there
is justice.
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