The French are truly living up to the methods of their hymned revolution by trying to force their lethal waste, Le Clemenceau , on India rather than treat the dead ship on their own territory. The French revolutionaries of 1789 perpetrated the Reign of Terror, amongst the most reckless massacres ever committed; their descendants today foist toxic terror upon us.

The current situation evokes the dichotomy of values that underlay the French Revolution in more ways than one. Though the revolutionaries waxed eloquent on liberty and equality, the French did not have any qualms in massacring thousands of anti-imperialists in Africa and the Caribbean in the years that followed. The toxic Clemenceau sailing for Indian shores is another instance of such double standards.

It's not just the French. The West has consistently displaced such double standards. While their governments lecture their counterparts in the South, accompanied very often with the threat of bombs, on respecting international laws, they continue to consign several international laws to the bin. Among these is decision ii /12 of the Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. This 1994 decision bans the export of toxic waste by countries of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (a group of industrialised nations) to developing countries.

A dead war ship like Le Clemenceau is obviously a hazardous waste. The highest court in France does not think so and prefers to call it a "material of war'. But such facetious arguments are clearly preempted by decision vii/26 of the Basel Convention's Conference of Parties. Moreover, if 27,000 tonnes of waste, including 1,000 tonnes of cancer causing asbestos is not hazardous, then what is? It did not occur to the French court to ask why the