State/Corporate Crime and Social Justice: Reflections on Politics, Power and Truth

John L. McMullan
Professor of Sociology
Saint Mary's University

Introduction

The process of producing steel, with little or no emission or waste control and with the indiscriminate dumping of waste into local waterways over the past 95 years has produced a 650 acre toxic site at tidewater in Sydney, Nova Scotia. (Nova Scotia, 1985:62; Canada, 1990:2; Vandermeulen, 1989:14). Described by scientists at Environment Canada as a "veritable witches' brew of pollutants," the tar ponds alone are now though to contain 700,000 tonnes of toxic waste, posing grave threats to the health and safety of workers, to those who live near the production site, and to the local environment [Trider and Vaidya 1980:30; Canada, 1987; 1990:9; Eaton et al. 1985:66; Gorcon and Coneybeer, 1991:438].

What I want to talk about today is the illegal conduct of corporate and state actors in the production of steel at Sydney, Nova Scotia, from 1900 to 1995. My objectives are: (1) to identify the characteristics of corporate harm and illegality; (2) to identify the historical facts and events which have contributed to those harms and violations, and; (3) to use the information collected to explore the utility of the concept of state corporate crime and to reflect on the relationship between power, politics and truth in the production of the "tar ponds."

I will emphasize, up front, the organizational issues surrounding the Sydney Tar Ponds. While there are several different formal definitions of organizational crime and numerous theoretical perspectives that attempt to explain it [Finney and Lesieur, 1982; Kramer, 1982; Ermann and Lundman, 1987; Snider, 193; McMullan, 1992; BOX, 1983), Shrager and Short (1978) still provide the best definition, and political economy, I believe, offers the most useful theoretical paradigm to understand organizational crime [Barret, 1981;Cambliss, 1988, 1989; Michalowski, 1985; Perace, 1993]. In Shrager and Short's (1978:411) opinion, organization crimes are best thought of as "illegal acts of omission or commission of an individual or a group of individuals in a legitimate formal organization in accordance with the operative goals of the organization, which have serious impacts on employees, consumers, or the general public," It should be made clear what this definition implies. It does not say that there must be intention for organizational crime to exist. Indifference or neglect may very well be the greater cause of avoidable human harm, and organizational crime is conceptualized so as to include acts of omission as well as more obvious and purposive acts [BOX, 1983:31; Hills, 1987:187-206; Reiman, 1979:61]. It does suggest, however that the pursuit of organizational objectives is fundamental to understanding corporate wrongdoing [Kramer, 1982:81; Clinard & Yeager, 1980; Clinard, 1990; Vaughan, 1983]. Furthermore, corporate crimes are not limited to acts specifically prohibited under criminal law. They include, as well, organizationally-based "illegal acts and socially injurious acts" which violate civil, regulatory, and administrative laws and even some acts which are violations of yet to be codified human rights [Michalowski, 1985: 314-318]. As we shall see, this definition fits very well the tar ponds complex.

The environmental harms and illegalities committed during the process of steel production in Sydney, however, were the collective result of the interaction between state agencies, both federal and provincial, and various private sector corporations. Thus, the illegal acts surrounding the tar ponds complex fall into a special category of organizational misconduct that Kramer and Mischalowski (1990:3) have identified as state-corporate crime: "illegal or socially injurious actions that occur when one or more institutions of political governance pursue a goal in direct cooperation with one or more institutions of economic production and distribution." Prominent examples of state corporate crime include the space shuttle-Challenger explosion in which a combination of governmental and corporate pressures led to an avoidable tragic loss of lives [Kramer, 1992], the Iran-Contra affair involving the C.I.A., the National Security Council and private arms suppliers, environmental crimes committed by private contractors in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy at numerous federal nuclear production sites, and bribery, bid-rigging and kickback schemes surrounding the allocation of some federal state contracts to private companies in Canada under the Conservative government in the 1980s [Hills, 1987: 192-193; Simon and Eitzen, 1990; Kauzlarich and Kramer, 1993; Szasz, 1986; Block, 1993; Cameron, 1994; Friedrichs, 1996].

The structural relations between corporate and state organizations, so central to this study, are best analysed using a political economy framework. Why so? To start, the basic assumption behind a political economy approach is that the dynamics and structures of corporate capitalism provide numerous incentives for corporate enterprises to use illegitimate methods to achieve profit goals, if legitimate opportunities are blocked or unavailable [Coleman, 1987; Braithwaite, 1984; 1989a; Snider, 1993; Simon and Eitzen, 1990]. Secondly, the competitive drive to accumulate capital, and the centralization and concentration of capital and wealth have a direct bearing on the character of the corporation as a criminal actor. The criminal conduct of the corporate sector is frequently guided by exchange-based or surplus-based motivations [Brathwaite, 1991]. The resource holding, allocation and manipulation potentials of capital allow corporations to constitute a unique range of criminal possibilities - tax-evasion schemes, pension frauds, price-fixing scams, product misrepresentations, the formation of hazardous environments, etc. - and allow corporations to purchase knowledge, experts and counter-strategies to thwart investigation, apprehension and prosecution and cover-up wrongdoing, in ways that crimes of the crimes of the lowerr class cannot normally provide [Michalowski, 1985; BOX, 1983; Barett, 1981; Snider, 1987; Messerschmidt 1986; Pearce and Woodiwiss, 1994]. Thirdly a political economy perspective sheds light on the organizational criminality of the state itself, since many of its institutions are directly or indirectly implicated in the capital accumulation process [Champliss, 1988, 1989; Casey, 1985; Snider, 1993]. "Crimes of capital," in Michalowski's (1985:315) phrase, bring together a complex of illegal social relations associated with economic development and the circulation of money: white collar crime, business crime, organized crime and political crime [O'Malley, 1987]. But, what links corporate crime and state crime together is that they both operate in legitimate fields, they both exploit positions of public trust, and they both violate laws for the corporation, not against it.

Finally, I also want to emphasize in this talk, the role of what political philosophers call the arcana imperii I mean not merely the "mysteries of government" and "deception" as it is traditionally understood, but as well the deliberate falsehoods and the outright lies used as legitimate means to achieve political ends. Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues. But as Hannah Arendt [1972:5] long ago warned, governments are increasingly deploying organized lying as a weapon against truth. This "active, aggressive capacity", she stresses, is clearly different from what she calls, "our passive susceptibility" to fall prey to error, illusion, or the distortions of memory." At bottom, Arendt argues that lying in politics is no longer mostly about protecting state secrets or directed against external enemies of state. If is no longer even mostly about hiding and deceiving others without deceiving oneself. Rather, contemporary political lying deals efficiently with things that are not secrets at all, but are known to practically everybody. This is obvious in the case of the numerous re-writings of history under the very eyes of those who witnessed it [i.e. denying the holocaust to Jewish survivors of concentration camps] but it is equally true in image-making of all sorts and in actual government policies in which again, known and established facts are denied, ignored or rearranged, if they hurt an image or question an initiative. Organized lying does not tear, as it were, a hole in the fabric of factuality, it restructures the entire factual texture and often makes the liar a victim of their own falsehoods.

The facts are not secure in the hands of power will be confirmed by the narrative I am about to recount. Factual truths, many of them unwelcome in political circles and some of them frankly embarrassing and harmful in their consequences, were often suppressed or consciously transformed into "mere opinion" by the power of lying, as if the nature of the political realm was to be at war with the truthfulness of medical, public and environmental veracities.

Narrative

The early history of steel production in Sydney, Nova Scotia, was formed by the intersection of private capital, mostly US based, and federal government grants, incentives and tax breaks. However, despite the optimism of early capital in the industry, the steel production process quickly ran into major product quality problems. Breakdowns in the production procedures, the use of poor quality ores and coke in the production process, the improper introduction and removal of select elements such as carbon, silicon, sulfur, phosphorous and manganese in the coking process, and poor heating and cooling practices impaired product quality and produced excessive solid waste and hazardous airborne emissions. Right from the beginning the Dominion Iron and Steel Company, a pioneer in the result that huge quantities of contaminated coke oven waste were produced and dumped on site, into a small waterway leading to Sydney harbour, known as Muggah Creek. Efforts to process the waste as fertilizer and later as fuels proved unworkable as both the chemical composition and the burn-off emissions were too toxic for safe use [Trider, 1980; Campbell, 1952].

Without much forward progress on product quality, corporate capital turned to the state of bailouts, guaranteed market arrangements, grants, and subsidies, all of wich allowed BESCO [British Empire Steel Corporation], formed in 1920, and DOSCO [Dominion Steel and Goal Corporation], formed in 1928, who were the successors to the Dominion Iron and Steel Company, to continue producing with inferior coals and ores and to continue the contamination process. By the 1930s the Sydney mill was both dangerous and dirty. Owners did not readily reinvest profits in technology or the physical plant. Equipment, ovens, and furnaces were outdated and hazardous and some of them actually remained in use until the 1980s. Throughout the war years and into the early 1950s, DOSCO struggled to complete on world markets. While volume went up, the Sydney plant, nevertheless, was lagging behind competitors. It needed major export markets to survive and once again the federal state intervened in the form of subsidized freight rates to stabilize production for the Atlantic Canadian site [Harvey, 1971; Trider, 1980].

In the 1950s, DOSCO experimented with new ores from Labrador, Brazil and Africa as well as with coals from the United States, but the airborne and solid waste pollution problems only worsened. By the late 1950s, the city of Sydney was being covered by an immense reddish cloud of dust-laden gas [containing tars, oils, naphthalene, ammonia, phenols, sulfide, thioyonite, etc.], caused by about 117 emissions per month from the plant - the effects of which the Department of Health and Welfare called the "deposition and discolouration of buildings, walls, textiles, laundry, and any exposed surface..and the penetration of pollutants into the respiratory tracts, nasal passages and the lungs of local citizens." [Katz and McKay, 1959:13]. The recommendations of both federal and provincial governments, who had been called in to study the health consequences of these pollution emissions, were to urge DOSCO to "alleviate the environmental degradation" and to invest in a new sintering plant to assist in safer ore processing [Katz and McKay, 1959:16]. DOSCO refused to construct a new sintering plant, claiming that the $6,000,000 cost was prohibitive.

As DOSCO entered the 1960s, its position grew ever more critical. The corporation was rapidly losing its major rail production market to foreign competitors. European, Asian and American producers had modern plants, lower wage bills and were more market flexible. DISCO needed new technology and new investment. The provincial state, at this time, encouraged a $30 million modernization scheme using "optimum raw materials, reduced freight rates and the increased important of low volatile coals", mostly from the United States [Nova Scotia, 1960:3-4]. This scheme, however, set off a major crisis in the local regional coal sector. Not surprisingly, there was reduced domestic coal demand, no new markets for local products and numerous mine closures. Private capital quickly withdrew from the Nova Scotia coal economy, and the federal state stepped in to stabilize the unintended consequences of provincial government policy. They formed the Cape Breton Development Corporation [DEVCO] to manage the entire regional coal industry. Yet despite new found markets, state loan guarantees, government subsidies and bailouts, DOSCO still floundered and in 1968, they decided to abandon their Sydney plant. The steel industry, however, was quickly taken over by the provincial government which formed the Sydney Steel Corporation [SYSCO] to own and manage the troubled mill [Harvey, 1971:49-53].

While investments, production and modernization of the mill increased, state ownership and management brought some of the most blatant examples of illegal contamination. Consider the following three examples:

1. Sysco cooperated with Devco and returned to using impure local coals and ores. Over the next few years, however, an alarming pattern emerged. According to a study commissioned by the Department of National Health and Welfare, the total dust fall for the Sydney area increased by 71% from 1967 to 1970, with the highest total dust fall recorded at 521.3 tons per square mile per month for January 1970. These figures were deemed "undesirable from a community welfare standpoint...and exceeded acceptable limits" [Kilotat and Wilson, 1970:5; 12,13]. In the absence of any air control system, the Department of National Health urged the cooperation of both levels of government in reducing the harmful emissions. Federal government reaction was indeed swift; the findings were declared restricted material and the commissioned report was suppressed.

A further study conducted in 1973 by the Federal Air Pollution Control Directorate confirmed these alarming findings and reported that emissions from the Sydney plant "exceeded their acceptable limit by a considerable margin...and to meet particle limits...an overall reduction of 98% would be necessary" [Havelock, 1973:vii].

The Pollution Directorate concluded that a reduction of harmful emissions was possible only if government utilized the best practical technology and obtained virtually sulphur-free coke. But these recommendations were in direct conflict with the now federally sponsored Devco policy of using local toxic coals. They were ignored and public access to this report was restricted.

A year later a third study warned that coke production under federal and provincial ownership now produced emissions "2800 to 6000 percent higher than 'allowable' standards" and required overall emission reductions of 95 percent to return air quality to tolerable levels" [Choquette, 1974:vii; Gordon and Coneybeer, 1991:439]. Residential areas south of the plant, it was noted, were especially affected by coke oven contamination. Like the other studies, this report was shelved and only released to the public in 1988.

2. The blatant air pollution had an adverse effect on the health of local citizens. Aside from respiratory disorders, health officials reported "significantly elevated cancer mortality rates among both sexes, aged 35-69 in Sydney compared to Canada for all cancers" [Canada, 1983a: 2]. They warned that the latency period for the development of cancers was shortening to decades, perhaps even years. Indeed from 1977 to 1980, Sydney residents had 346.6 per 100,000 cancer rates, compared to 196.8 per 100,000 for the rest of Canada [Jones, 1989].

3. The resort to using more quantities of high impurity materials led to ever more dumping of highly slag waste into nearby creeks and pits, thus ultimately contaminating Sydney's harbour [Hildebrand, 1982:62]. Investigations by Environment Canada confirmed that the visible coloured plumes in the Sydney Harbour were " toxic effluents and high iron concentrations from rainfall land wash, and particle fallout the coke ovens, blast furnaces, bloom mill scale pit and cooling ponds draining directly into the water untreated" [Trider, 1980:vi]. The total iron and coke pile run off at Sysco was "a factor of ten higher than the industry average," and the daily discharge into Sydney harbour was "735.5 pounds of phenol, 10,447 pounds of ammonia, 919.4 pounds of cyanide, 2,058 pounds of thiocyanate, and 995 pounds of cyanide, 1,058 pounds of thiocyanate, and 995 pounds of oil and grease' [Trider, 1980:16,300]. Toxicity tests on lobsters, moreover, showed concentrations of PAHs, including benzo(a)pyrene [a chronic mutagenic and carcinogenic], cadcium, mercury, lead and PCBs, tobe 26 times the level found in lobsters in the much larger Boston Harbour [Eaton et al. 1985:107; Nova Scotia, 1984; Hildebrand, 1928:73; Matheson, 1983:1; Hamilton and Gilban, 1984; Kiely et al., 1988].

The response of the state corporation was not to stop the polluting production methods or halt the indiscriminate dumping of toxic waste. Instead, they restricted public safety and environmental data and pressed ahead with new modernization plans, arguing that pollution control and property clean-up would follow new plant and equipment developments and re-tooling. Again the Federal State was lobbied for assistance and finance a $250 million modernization program [Canada, 1991:1-3]. Progress was swift on mill redesign but laggard on testing and removing tar pond contamination. No sustained effort was made to locate PCB concentrations and no full scale environmental assessment was ever undertaken, despite the fact that government research showed that the local waste [as of 1985] in the tar ponds was "54,000 tonnes dry weight and between 4.4 and 8,8 million pounds of PAH" [Nova Scotia, 1985:13].

Even more disturbing than the failure to restore the environment was the decision to continue contaminating while modernizing. The Director of the Federal Bureau of Chemical Hazards warned the Regional Director of the Atlantic Branch of Environment Canada that continuing to operate the Sysco plant, without the addition of some emission controls, "could be expected to result in increases in morbidity in the coke plant workers and probably in the residents of Sydney." A "finite increase in the risk of [lung] cancer" will occur, he concluded, as a "result of uncontrolled coke oven emission to the ambient atmosphere in Sydney" [Hickman, 1985:2]. The Regional Director of Environment Canada passed on this concern to the Deputy Minister of the Nova Scotia's Department of the Environment, who in turn, advised the provincial Department of Health of the problem [Norrene, 1985:2].

The provincial government, now informed of the risks and dangers, was much more concerned that 'unofficial' federal government pressure against continuing production might jeopardize the plans underway for modernization [Abboy, 1985]. Not surprisingly then, the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Community Health Services re-evaluated the situation as follows:"since the hazardous nature of the coke oven emissions primarily results from long-term exposure, the political or social benefits of allowing the coke ovens to resume operations, may outweigh the health risks in the short-term"...[Lavigne, 1985]. Just what the provincial government wanted to hear!

Shortly thereafter a public misinformation campaign was launched. Arguments were put to the public by government officials that studies concerning cancer risks should "focus on lifestyle factors such as smoking and diet, rather than occupational factors" [Donham, 1986:3]. It was then announced by the Nova Scotia government that an extensive telephone survey would commence in Sydney to "examine resident smoking and dietary habits...especially consumption of green vegetables"[cited in Donham, November 9, 1985]. The Minister of Health doubted that there was a serious health hazard and claimed that "we really should have a look at the methodology of previous studies" [cited in Donham, November 9, 1985]. The Premier of the province downplayed the health and public safety risks. "Statistics suggesting people downwind from Sysco are at greater health risk are not new...adding he is not a health expert but neither are those who put together the studies? [cited in Cape Breton Post, November 6, 1985]. And steelworker spokespersons invoked a conspiracy. "For ninety years the coke ovens have been operating...but now all of a sudden...we have people screaming to keep [the] closed...it's a conspiracy to stop the modernization plan" [cited in Stang, November 6, 1985].

But the resort to "production at any cost" simply added to the problems that the "clean up" would eventually have to confront. Indeed, by 1986 the provincial state was in the absurdly paradoxical position of 'cleaning up" the tar ponds while simultaneously exacerbating the contamination process. Furthermore, their plans to incinerate the waste in the ponds proved impossible. The much publicized incinerator project was a $58 million failure. There were too many PCB concentrations in the tar ponds to be safely burned. The sludge was so thick that it could not be pumped up a nearby hill to the incinerator site, and the incinerator itself, designed for PAH destruction, was unable to burn PCN's and other waste without creating a "toxin factory" that would even further degrade the atmosphere [Vandermeulen, 1989; Donham, October 11, 1992; Zatman, October 12, 1992; October 18, 1993; September 8, 1994; January 16, 1996]. By 1993, the Sysco plant was $700 million in debt. This has been absorbed by the taxpayers of Nova Scotia because the provincial government was desperately seeking buyers and so wanted Sysco to go to the auction block with a new mill, a clean balance sheet and without a clean-up price. On November 8, 1994 the taxpayers' burden was increased by another $30 million in a joint operate-to-upchase scheme with China's MinMetals group. But the financial picture is not promising. Sysco has accumulated about $28 million more in losses after the MinMetals agreement was signed. The latter have not ponied up any of their interest to Global Steel, an Ontario-based holding company, with which the Nova Scotia government has so far been unable to come to terms. Two huge rail orders - one for C.N. and the other for the Chinese government - have recently been rejected for alleged product defects. Sysco has swallowed up over $2 billion in federal and provincial monies since 1967. There may be more injections of state capital to come, especially since the Nova Scotia government is now committed to privatization by the end of 1997. As for the clean-up project, incredible as it may seen, there is now a new $29.4 million plan to bury the ponds with slag, a cement-like residue from the steel making process, cover it with topsoil and grass!

Implications and Reflections

So what are the implications of this story for an organizational analysis of illegality? What does it tell us about the relationship between power, politics and social justice? In the interest of brevity I will make only six points:

1. The extraction of coal and the production of steel has been central to the hinterland economy of Nova Scotia. This has meant that the organizations charged with its development - private and public - were fervently goal oriented and highly concerned with performance. They developed aggressive geo-political economic interests which caused them to continuously seek new opportunities and advantages. They were acutely concerned with production objectives, markets, sales and products. Profit maximization combined with regional growth and stability, the historical evidence suggests, linked organizational actors together in such a manner as to engender strong loyalties, commitments and pressures to persistently renew the general financial viability of the Sydney Steel Plant, no matter what the social cost [Oerrow, 1961; 1972; Snider, 1993; McMullan, 1992; Braithwaite, 1991].

This meant that the production methods and goals of Besco, Dosco, and Sysco took pride of place over environmental, occupational health, and public issues. Studies of asbestos and uranium mining, of nuclear facilities, of weapons production, of waste management, of pulp and paper pollution, of clean air practices, ect., all confirm that corporations regularly convert natural materials into usable commodities with little regard for air, water and other environmental safety [Brodeur, 1985; Churchill, 1991; Faulkner, 1987: 170-184; Kauzlarich and Kramer, 1993; Hessing, 1993; Block, 1993, 1994; Seis, 1993; Simon and Eitzen, 1990]. But in this instance, the owners, managers, and state officials at Sysco did not so much have to 'innovate' criminal means to circumvent restricted opportunities, as BOX [1993:36], for example, argues is common in cases of corporate crime; rather Besco, Dosco and Sysco had enormous autonomy in preselecting and setting the courses of action for their goal implementation. They did not have to avoid or evade the law. They operated, in effect, with a blank cheque to use any method that could be justified as profitable in their own or in the regional interest.

2. Despite much state intervention and direct sponsorship and ownership, there was little government oversight. Few regulations, an enforcement regime of "gentle persuasion", an ideology of shared risks, a presumption of benign corporate motives and conduct, and a belief that the internal self-monitoring of corporations and governments could control illegal and harmful behaviours prevailed. There was no external independent review assessment body, and the role of the inspectorate was that of a "secondary support system" to the so-called "internal responsibility" system of the employer [MacLeod, 1983; Glasbeek, 1989]. No application of criminal law was ever attempted. Policy recommendations were interpreted in such a way as to improve product quality and markets, and not enforce strict air, safety or waste management standards. When monitoring procedures discovered harmful violations beyond the allowable norms, the results were ignored or suppressed. Enforcement regimes were thus " captured" by the very industry they were supposed to invigilate [Snider, 1988; Caputo, 1989; Schrecker, 1984, 1989; Reasons, Ross and Patterson, 1981].

3. It seems likely that an organizational 'philosophy', intergeneral and inter-organizational, developed within the production site. It stressed that the profitable production of steel materials and a safe, healthy environment and policy were incompatible aims. A 'subculture of pragmatic amorality' was embedded in the standard operating procedures at Sysco which knowingly denied harm and victims and downplayed state/corporate responsibility for danger and victims and injury. Secrecy and the suppression of information were justified a prior and post facto and were linked to the cry for jobs in a resource hinterland economy [BOX, 1983; Coleman, 1989: 211-212; Hills, 1987:190; Braithwaite, 1989a, 1989b; Vaughan, 1983:61]. The politics of not polluting was perceived as more likely to create a legitimacy crisis for the local state than arresting the environmental degradation and preventing public health and safety violations. As the Premier of the province put it, failure to continue with coke production "would mean a loss of jobs at Sysco...and a loss of jobs for Devco" [cited in the Cape Breton Post, November 6, 1985].

4. A central tenet of the political-economy model of organizational crime is that capitalist structures operate as inducements for illegal activity. Put simply, they provide incentives for organizations to use illegitimate means towards achieving profits, it legitimate means are blocked. Without doubt, some of the illegal conduct committed by the corporate enterprises was directly related to the motive of capital growth. But a lot of the worst polluting occurred under state ownership and joint public/private management. The illegalities committed by Sysco do not readily fit a model based on the notion that organizations commit illegalities in order to facilitate their own self interested attempts at accumulating capital. Clearly, Kramer and Michalowski's [1990] idea of state-corporate crime has applicability because it extends the rational goals/blocked opportunity model of crime production to include positions of trust in governance [Friedrichs, 1995]. But in the emphasis on "strain leading to illegal behaviour" is difficult to support since, in the Sysco case, the production site complex did not have to adapt to much strain. Rather the absence of ordering, accountability and censure more than encouraged the illegal behaviour in question [Caputo, 1989; Schrecker, 1989]. The Sysco case study suggests, moreover, that crimes of capital may need to be grounded in far more diverse motives than organizational gain or capital accumulation. Just as the production of nuclear weapons waste in the U.S., for example, may arise in part from non-profit based arrangements, [Kauzlarich and Kramer, 1993] so too the production of toxic steel in Nova Scotia seems to have arisen, in some good measure, from the State's concern to protect jurisdictional interests, promote its own social legitimacy, and simply sustain itself bureaucratically and politically [Friendrichs, 1996].

5. This case narrative is also revealing about the relevance of truthfulness and lying in political action and about the capacity of politicians to deny in thought and word whatever happens to be the case. A basic issue raised by the Tar Pond study is deception - self-deception and the "defactualization" of the world. What is truly astounding is that little reality or common-sense could penetrate the minds of the problem solvers, the public-relations experts, the government bureaucrats, the elected politicians, the private developers, etc. It is the non-relation between facts and decisions, the inability to think about the real risks of the situation, the willful, deliberate disregard of the facts around medical, environmental and public safety for almost thirty years that haunts the teller and, I suppose, the listener of this story.

The divergence between facts-established by medical experts, health and safety workers, environmental engineers, local citizens and sometimes even by decision-makers themselves - and the premises, theories and hypotheses according to which decisions were made was, at times, complete. As regards the "it can wait" theory, the "you do not have enough greens in your diet" scenario, the "I am no expert, you are no expert, they are not expert" explanation and the "conspiracy of crusaders" argument, they are all, of course, unsupported by evidence, calculated in the cause of image-seeking and winning over people's minds to production at any cost. And they do raise serious doubts about the cherished notion that government needs the arcana imperii to be able to function properly. It would seem that the mysteries of government, in this instance, have so befogged the minds of the actors themselves that they no longer believed their own findings, no longer knew or remembered the truth behind their own fabrications, no longer were able to find themselves as rational actors in the web of their own statements to non truthfulness. To paraphrase Hannah Arendt [1972:36], in the realm of politics self-deception is the danger par excellence; the self-deceived deceiver loses all contact with not only their audience, but also the real world, which still will catch up with them, because they can remove their minds from it, but not their bodies.

But in the case of the Sydney Tar Ponds it was as though the normal process of self-deception ended was reserved; it was not as though deception ended with self-deception. The deceivers started with self-deception. Perhaps because of their high station and their astounding self-assurance, they were so convinced of their success at manipulating people that they anticipated victory in the battle for people's minds. Perhaps the internal world of government, with its bureaucracy on one hand, its focussed and restricted social life on the other, made self-deception relatively easy. Certainly no ivory tower of scholars has ever better prepared the mind to ignore the facts of life than did the world of politics. There are some who still believe the problems of the tarponds can be covered up with sod! And since they lived in a defactualized world anyway, they did not and still do not find it difficult to pay any more attention to the fact that their audience then and now refuses to be convinced, than to other uncomfortable facts.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. If the question is "how could they", not only start these policies of deception but carry them through to their bitter, costly and absurd end; the answer surely is that the disregard of reality was inherent in the policies and goals themselves. Governments needed few facts, little information. They had "plans", "agenda", and all data that did not fit was denied or ignored. Truth was an unwelcome visitor in this house of power because it possesses an "infuriating stubbornness" that nothing could move except "plain lies" [Arendt, 1971:241].

6. So this leads me to my final remark. Despite all the falsehoods, deceptions, misrepresentations, and cover ups, the whole "operation of deception" surrounding Sysco did run aground, did become counter productive, that is, became more confusing than convincing. For the trouble with lying and deceiving, in politics as in life, is that the liar and deceiver wishes to suppress. This means that truth, even if it does not prevail in public, nevertheless, possesses an enduring primacy over all falsehoods. Truth possesses a strength of its own. While it can be defaced, denied and even destroyed, it cannot be easily replaced. And the truth tellers - many of them outside the political realm proper, reporters, human rights experts, scientists and academics, are telling some interesting stories about Sysco and the combination of the local environment. That they are doing so independently, impartially and with integrity is not unimportant for, in my opinion, a standpoint outside the strictly political realm, in instructions of higher learning, in the world of mass communications, in the arts, to name a few, is actually vital not only to the discovery and dissemination of unwelcome truths but to the rejuvenate of an increasingly incredulous political sphere, that at least in the case of the Tar Ponds inbroglio seems to have lost its mind while trying to capture the minds of others.
 

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