Jude
Finisterra Interviewed
By Democracy
Now!
07 December, 2004
Democracy
Now!
The 20th anniversary
of the Bhopal gas tragedy was a day of embarrassment for Dow chemicals,
the present owner of Union Carbide and the major news media around the
world.
On Friday the BBC
World Satellite television channel broadcast an interview with a man
identified as Jude Finisterra, who claimed to represent Dow chemicals.
Dow, which bought
Union Carbide three years ago, has always maintained it "has no
responsibility" for the 1984 disaster when tons of lethal gases
leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in the city of Bhopal,
India. 7,000 people lost their lives within days. 15,000 more lost died
in the following years. Around 100,000 others are still suffering chronic
and debilitating illnesses. It was one of the worst industrial disasters
in history and for years activists have called on the firm to take full
responsibility for the disaster and to clean up the contaminated site.
In the interview,
Finisterra said Dow had accepted responsibility for the accident and
had set-up a multibillion dollar compensation package. The hoax ran
twice on BBC World and was picked up by the major news wires before
the BBC determined that no man named Jude Finisterra worked at Dow and
he was an imposter. The company was forced to remind the world it did
not take responsibility for the disaster and said there was no compensation
fund set-up for the victims.
In Frankfurt, Dow's
share price fell 4.2 percent in 23 minutes, wiping $2 billion off its
market value before recovering all the day"s losses three hours
later. The BBC is continuing to apologize for running the interview
today and says it has lunched an internal investigation. Later the man
calling himself Finisterra told BBC radio he was part of the Yes Men.
Jude Finisterra, aka Andy Bichlbaum, a member of The Yes Men.
BBC World interview with Jude Finisterra.
BBC apology for interview.
Dow Chemical statement on interview.
AMY GOODMAN: Were
going to turn now, before we go to that interview, to Jude Finisterra,
or so he identifies himself. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Thanks a lot, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: First
of all, can you tell us who you are with?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Yes, Jude Finisterra is actually a made up name. Jude is the patron
saint of impossible causes, and Finisterra means end of the earth,
which kind of represents the situation there, I think, in some way.
I'm with the Yes Men and we have done this, sort of, what we call identity
correction on a number of different targets. This represents our latest
effort.
AMY GOODMAN: And
what exactly did you do? How did you end up being called for an interview
with the BBC?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
A couple of years ago we set up a website that looked a lot like the
real Dow Chemical website but was intended to raise questions about
its refusal to do anything about the Bhopal situation, you know, 18
years ago then after the catastrophe. Dow, who owns Union Carbide, refuses
to clean up the site, still doesn't two years after that refuses to
compensate the victims who received $500 apiece and Dow actually, the
head of the Dow P.R. team went on record saying that's plenty good for
an Indian, whereas in reality it only pays for a year of medical care.
So with this site, we intended to explain from Dows perspective
exactly why they wouldn't do anything and we sent out a press release
saying that in fact I was responsible only to its shareholders, and
no Bhopali is a shareholder. So about a week and a half ago we received
an email at this website Dowethics.com from somebody who hadn't read
it very carefully, and she wanted Dows official statement on the
Bhopal situation, and she wanted it on December 3, the 20th anniversary
of catastrophe. So we, of course, obliged and spent quite a while trying
to figure out on what our approach would be and settled on this, the
approach we actually took, because we figured it would result in the
most media and possibly a lot of media getting in the United States,
which often completely ignores the anniversary.
AMY GOODMAN: So
you went into a studio in Paris?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Thats right. Yes. Because I live in Paris, and Mikes here,
as well another Yes Man -- and so we couldn't afford to go to
London what with the pound and the dollar. So they set up a studio here
in Paris and went in on the morning of December 3. I was hooked in with
the host in London, and it was a live interview, and I announced the
good news.
AMY GOODMAN: Well,
why don't we listen to and watch what happened and right after this
Dow's share price fell 4.2% in 23 minutes, wiping $2 billion off its
market value. This is, well, he identified himself as Jude Finisterra,
a Dow spokesperson being interviewed by BBC television last Friday.
BBC WORLD: Well,
joining us live from Paris is Jude Finisterra. Hes a spokesman
for Dow Chemical which took over Union Carbide. Good morning to you.
A day of commemoration in Bhopal. Do you now accept responsibility for
what happened?
JUDE FINISTERRA:
Steve, yes. Today is a great day for all of us at Dow, and I think for
millions of people around the world, as well. It is twenty years since
the disaster, and today Im very, very happy to announce that for
the first time Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe.
We have a $12 billion plan to finally, at long last, fully compensate
the victims including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their
entire lives and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal plant site.
Now, when we acquired Union Carbide three years ago we knew what we
were getting, and it is worth $12 billion. $12 billion. We have resolved
to liquidate Union Carbide, this nightmare for the world and this headache
for Dow, and use the $12 billion to provide more than $500 per victim,
which is all that they have seen. A maximum of just about $500 per victim.
It is not plenty good for an Indian as one of our spokespersons unfortunately
said a couple of years ago. In fact, it pays for one year of medical
care. We will adequately compensate the victims. Furthermore, we will
perform a full and complete remediation of the Bhopal site, which, as
you mentioned, has not been cleaned up. When Union Carbide abandoned
the site twenty years ago, or sixteen years ago, they left tons of toxic
waste which continues the site continues to be used as a playground
by children. Water continues to be drunk from the ground water underneath.
It is a mess, Steve, and we need a Dow --
BBC WORLD: Its
a mess, certainly, Jude. Thats good news that you have finally
accepted responsibility. Some people would say too late, three years,
almost four years on. How soon is your money going to make a difference
to the people in Bhopal?
JUDE FINISTERRA:
Well, as soon as we can get it to them, Steve. We have begun the process
of liquidating Union Carbide. This is, as you mentioned, late, but it
is the only thing we can do. When we acquired Union Carbide, we did
settle their liabilities in the United States immediately. And we are
now, three years later, prepared to do the same in India. We should
have done it three years ago. We are doing it now. I would say that
it is better late than never, and I would also like to say that this
is no small matter, Steve. This is the first time in history that a
publicly-owned company of anything near the size of Dow has performed
an action which is significantly against its bottom line simply because
it's the right thing to do, and our shareholders may take a bit of a
hit, Steve, but I think that if they are anything like me they will
be ecstatic to be part of such a historic occasion of doing right by
those that we have wronged.
BBC WORLD: And
does this mean you will also cooperate in any future legal actions in
India or the USA?
JUDE FINISTERRA:
Absolutely, Steve. One of our non-financial commitments is to press
the United States government to finally extradite Warren Anderson, who
fled India after being arrested in 1984. He posted $2,000 bail on multiple
homicide charges and fled India promptly. We are going to press the
United States government to extradite Mr. Anderson, who is living in
Long Island, to India to finally face the charges and, I believe, they
may be lenient. We are also going to engage in unprecedented transparency.
We are going to release finally the full composition of the chemicals
and the studies that were performed by Union Carbide shortly after the
catastrophe. This information has never been released, Steve, and it's
time for it to be released in case any of that information can be of
use to medical professionals. And finally, we're going to perform --
we are going to fund research. Any interested researcher can contact
Dow's ethics and compliance office. We are going to fund with no strings
attached research into the safety of any Dow product whose safety --
many competent scientists have raised doubts about many Dow products,
and we do not want to be a company that sells products that may have
long-term negative effects on the world. This is a momentous occasion
and our new CEO, Andrew Liveris, who has been our CEO for just a month,
less than a month, has decided to take Dow in this unprecedented direction.
BBC WORLD: Jude,
we will leave it there. Thank you for joining us. Just to reiterate
what Jude Finisterra, the spokesman for Dow Chemical has just said,
he says Dow Chemical now fully accepts responsibility for the events
in Bhopal twenty years ago. And they will cooperate in future legal
action.
AMY GOODMAN: That
was the BBC television on Friday with the anchor outro-ing Jude Finisterra,
spokesperson for Dow. In fact, this was all a hoax and the real Jude
Finisterra, or I should say the man who was posing as the person who
doesn't exist, a member of the Yes Men, joins us on the phone from Paris
where he lives and from where he did that interview. Tell us what your
real name is.
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Andy Bichlbaum is my real name, and Im with, as you said, the
Yes Men.
AMY GOODMAN: Is
that your real real name?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Oh, sure. As close as it gets.
AMY GOODMAN: Well,
let's go to the BBC apologizing for their report.
BBC: The worlds
worst industrial accident is being remembered in India today. This morning
at 9:00 GMT and 10:00 GMT, BBC World ran an interview with someone purporting
to be from the Dow Chemical Company about Bhopal. This interview was
inaccurate and part of a deception. The person interviewed didn't represent
the company. We want to make clear that the information he gave was
entirely inaccurate. We apologize to Dow and to anyone who watched the
interview who may have been misled by it.
AMY GOODMAN: Again
that was from BBC, their apology. Then there was Dow , well, correcting
the apology that their supposed spokesperson had issued earlier that
day.
MARINA ASHANIN:
This morning a false statement was carried by BBC World regarding responsibility
for the Bhopal tragedy. The individual who made the statement identified
himself as a Dow spokesperson named Jude Finisterra. Dow confirms that
there was no basis whatsoever for this report, and we also confirm that
Jude Finisterra is neither an employee nor a spokesperson for Dow.
AMY GOODMAN: That
the spokesperson of Dow. Again Dow's share price fell 4.2% in 23 minutes,
wiping $2 billion off its market value before recovering all the days
losses hours later. What are your thoughts today, Andy, after having
done this? And how far did this news go? I mean, BBC takes it pretty
far. Who else picked up the story?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Well, Amy, it seemed to get picked up pretty much everywhere. Reuters
immediately wrote about the apology by Dow and then, of course, issued
a retraction itself. That was picked up by a number of places. The retraction
traveled very, very far, and a lot of the articles were sympathetic
and brought Bhopal and Dow into the, into the subject again and again
and again, so I think probably dozens of articles that wouldn't have
been written were written about it, which was the intention, really.
It was unfortunate that it had to be the BBC because the BBC had been
covering Bhopal rather extensively and well. We would have much rather
hoaxed FOX or ABC or NBC or CBS. But it was the BBC that was covering
the issue. Those other places couldn't give a rats ass about Bhopal.
AMY GOODMAN: Well,
if you had done this hoax on FOX, you would soon be heard on many more
stations than even theyre heard now, because FOX has just made
an agreement with Clear Channel which owns over 1,200 radio stations
in the country that Clear Channel stations will run FOX News headlines
every hour for five minutes.
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
They are clearly the correct target.
AMY GOODMAN: Is
it true that you issued another press release later in the day?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Yes, we felt that we owed Dow some public relations work so we issued
an explanation by Dow that in fact the Jude Finisterra fellow in the
morning had not been their representative and that in fact everything
he said was incorrect. Then we proceeded to outline exactly what was
incorrect. Dow was not going to remediate the site even though it wouldnt
cost very much; they were not going to compensate people to more than
$500, $500 was in fact enough for an Indian, plenty good for an Indian,
etc., etc. Everything they were not going to do we just spelled it out
for them, since all they had said was he was not their spokesperson.
We thought that was insufficient.
AMY GOODMAN: So
this was a press release that you put out under Dow's letterhead?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Right, exactly. Well, we sent it from Dowethics.com and signed it Dow.
AMY GOODMAN: And
how many picked up that story?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Well, it was the top story on News.google.com, as was the original apology
by Dow and the retraction of the apology. Our own retraction of our
own, of Dows apology was also for a brief time, maybe an hour
or so, the top story on news.google.com, so I dont know
if it was printed in anything or broadcast on anything, but it was at
least there.
AMY GOODMAN: And
the feelings of giving false hope to people in Bhopal who perhaps read
these reports in the Indian newspapers?
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Right, that is the most difficult thing about this. And, in fact, we
didn't expect it to run as long as it would. We really thought that
the BBC would catch on pretty much immediately or Dow would react even
more likely immediately. They didn't react for at least an hour, so
there was a much longer time when people thought it was real.
AMY GOODMAN: That
would mean that Dow would have had to jump in and say, no, we are not
sorry.
ANDY BICHLBAUM:
Right, and they did eventually, but they took at least an hour to do
that, and we thought that they would immediately contact the BBC, even
perhaps as it was running. I kept hearing voices in the background and
thinking I was about to get cut off during the interview. But two hours
later it was still a story. So that was sad. Also, but at the same time
we are talking about two hours of false hopes versus 20 years of unrealized
ones. And suffering for those who are still alive and weren't killed.
And all hopes are false until they are realized. So, you know, any protest
sort of brings false hopes, any protest against something as maniacal
as Dow. Like Dow is not likely to do anything about this, and so anytime
you hope that it is, its false in a way.
AMY GOODMAN: Well,
Jude, I want to thank you for being with us, or Andy Bichlbaum, or whoever
you are. I want to thank you for joining us. Jude Finisterra/Andy Bichlbaum
of the Yes Men, speaking to us from Paris. This is Democracy Now!
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